Helen Oyeyemi Quotes & Sayings

I've always felt happy in my own company. It's only when I get around other people that things get sticky. — Helen Oyeyemi

With boys there was a fundamental assumption that they had a right to be there - not always, but more often than not. With girls, Why her? came up so quickly. — Helen Oyeyemi

That woman - the me that had married Charlie - had tried and failed to find a gap in all of this that was so ordinary, to take some instrument to the gap and shape it, widen it until it got big enough to slip through. She'd wanted to make a beautiful thing, like the Flax Hill natives did. But not a lantern or a bookcase, a life. Not to have what it takes, and to be surrounded by witnesses too. The man you tried with. The children. A boy version of you, or a girl version of him, or both, looking at you with clear, pitiless eyes. — Helen Oyeyemi

Would that be dangerous, to not look while being looked at? — Helen Oyeyemi

I collected pictures and I drew pictures and I looked at the pictures by myself. And because no one else ever saw them, the pictures were perfect and true. They were alive. — Helen Oyeyemi

No, I found her. I know she doesn't look like a puppet, but she is one. I know it because when I first picked her up I said something I'd never said before. I put her down and when I picked her up I said the thing again without meaning to, and again it was something I hadn't said before, even though the words were the same. What's her routine? At the moment she only asks this one queation, but I'm hoping to learn how to get her to ask another. What's her question? Is your blood as red as this? A chess piece asking a personal queation, possibly one of the most personal questions that could be asked. — Helen Oyeyemi

I drew a chair up beside her and sang. All I do is dream of you the whole night through ... It was a horrible rendition, and I quite enjoyed attempting it, setting the notes free from the song as each one went farther and farther astray. — Helen Oyeyemi

Cities are fueled by the listless agony of workers providing services to other workers who barely acknowledge those services. — Helen Oyeyemi

I was a real mess at school. I got a bit of a reputation for being the weird girl: the girl who'd go silent randomly and just kind of write down replies to people's questions in a book. — Helen Oyeyemi

White-flowered shrubs thickened around her and so did sleep; it directed her limbs. Lie down now, sleep said sweetly. Lie down. These are the secret hours of the day, the time that owls and bats take to themselves. The stars change places now; let them. You lie down. — Helen Oyeyemi

I feel like an old lady; my hero is Miss Marple. — Helen Oyeyemi

Daphne came in with her arms full of books, and her eyes blazing like two poisoned moons. How'd you like the mess St. John? — Helen Oyeyemi

There were days when he touched the tip of her nose and it was enough, a miracle of plenty. — Helen Oyeyemi

Sometimes our subconscious is so transparent it's boring — Helen Oyeyemi

The first book I really loved was 'Little Women' - I'd have given anything for Beth to have been allowed to live; I remember crying very much over her death, trying to make the words change just by staring at them. I loved 'Anne of Green Gables,' too; 'What Katy Did;' and 'Peter Pan.' — Helen Oyeyemi

A house of stone and glass and iron should be stark and sober, a watchtower from which a benevolent guard is kept on society. But the white stone of this particular house rippled as if reacting to a hand that had found its most pleasurable contact. A notable newspaper critic had described this effect as being that of "a pernicious sensuality." And if that wasn't enough, the entire construction blushed a truly disgraceful peachy-pink at sunset and dawn. — Helen Oyeyemi

She encouraged herself to see her very small presence in the world as a good thing, a power, something that a hero might possess. — Helen Oyeyemi

He kissed me like ice cream, like a jazz waltz, the rough, gentle way the sea washed sand off my skin on the hottest day of the year. — Helen Oyeyemi

The Soul Selects Her Own Society (Chapter 12 title) — Helen Oyeyemi

The general advice is always be yourself, be yourself, which only makes sense if you haven't got an attitude problem. — Helen Oyeyemi

...she was herself entire, and knew she could not be consumed. — Helen Oyeyemi

My head got so heavy, it sank down into my chest. So say whatever it is you think you've got to say, St. John. That you're not in love with me. That you need to be alone. Say it. I'm not going to like it, no, I won't like it at all. But I'll be all right. — Helen Oyeyemi

But also ... I have plenty of people around me to talk to, and no one to be honest with. — Helen Oyeyemi

She isn't a storm or a leader or a king or a war or anyone whose life and death makes noise. The problem is words. There is skin, yes. And then, inside that, there is your language, the casual, inherited magic spells taht make your skin real. It's too late now
even if we could say "Shut up" or "Where's my dinner?" in the first language, the real language, the words weren't born in us. And unless your skin and your language touch each other without interruption, there is no word strong enough to make you understand that it matters that you live. The things that really "stay" are an Orisha, a kind night, a pretended boy, a garden song that made no sense. Those come closer to being enough. — Helen Oyeyemi

In my family, telling stories is just a way of life. — Helen Oyeyemi

But then, maybe "I don't believe in you" is the cruelest way to kill a monster. — Helen Oyeyemi

And without further argument he unsheathed the sword and cleaved Miss Foxe's head from her neck. He knew what was supposed to happen. He knew that this awkward, whispering creature before him should now transform into a princess - dazzlingly beautiful, free, and made wise by her hardship.
That is not what happened. — Helen Oyeyemi

Juju is not enough to protect you. Everything you have I will turn against you. I'll turn sugar bitter for you. I'll take your very shield and crack it on your head. — Helen Oyeyemi

Be bad. Be wicked. And you should worry. But don't. — Helen Oyeyemi

Years ago a friend and fellow writer, Nick Antosca, once made a remark about it being best not to threaten, but to simply act. An effective way of going about things, I think. — Helen Oyeyemi

No, this is pretty much the same version I read," I said, because it felt too damn late to back down. I imagine that from time to time some similar situation has led governments to declare war." pg.57 — Helen Oyeyemi

For reasons of my own I take note of the way people act when they're around mirrors. — Helen Oyeyemi

Pops says he loves me just the way I am, but not everyone in the world is like my father. Maman, for example. A difficult and dissatisfied woman. She made me learn flower arranging and how to walk properly
books on my head, the whole bit. These things ruined me for life. Now it sets my teeth on edge when I see flowers carelessly flung into a vase, and I'm forever looking at other women in the street and thinking, [I]Sloppy ... sloppy[/I]. And I know I shouldn't care, and I want to poke myself in the eye for caring, but I care anyway, so thanks for that, Maman. — Helen Oyeyemi

Do you want this ice cream?" he asked her, whisking the dish all around the tabletop. "I mean, do you truly want it? Would you fight for this ice cream? Would you bear a deep wound in order to possess this ice cream completely? How deep a wound? What if it was as deep as the grave? What does this ice cream really mean to you, Miss Cabrini? — Helen Oyeyemi

And in time, and by being a good woman, and a patient woman, she would have won a good and patient man. — Helen Oyeyemi

I'm never sad when a friend goes far away, because whichever city or country that friend goes to, they turn the place friendly. They turn a suspicious-looking name on the map into a place where a welcome can be found. Maybe the friend will talk about you sometimes, to other friends that live around him, and then that's almost as good as being there yourself. You're in several places at once! In fact, my daughter, I would even go so far as to say that the further away your friends, and the more spread out they are the better your chances of going safely through the world ... — Helen Oyeyemi

So many times I've encountered people who are just kind of like, 'Yeah, Nigeria,' and, you know, thump their chest and seem very sure of, like, being Nigerian. And I'm just kind of, like, I wish I could be that sure. — Helen Oyeyemi

Sometimes I do what I say I'm going to do, but more often I don't. It's a failing. The least of my failings, and the only one I feel up to admitting at the moment. — Helen Oyeyemi

I saw them in the dark, the girls, the women yet to be found. I counted their faces, gave them names and said the names, as if calling a class register. Here's what I learnt from the clippings: that there is a pattern. These women had requested assistance. They'd told people: Someone is watching me, has been following me, has beaten me up before, has promised me he will kill me. They'd pointed their murderers out, and they had been told "It won't happen," or that nothing could be done, because of this and that, etc. I was jumpy in those days, expecting something terrible to happen to me at any moment, without knowing where it would happen to me, or why, or who would do it. — Helen Oyeyemi

I like to hear the marching of typewriter keys, the shudder of the space bar, the metallic ding at the end of a line. Those sounds are encouraging, sounds made by someone who is interested in you and in what you're saying, someone who understands exactly what you're getting at. "Hmm," the typewriter says. And "Mmmm. I-see-I-see-I-see." And sometimes it chuckles ... — Helen Oyeyemi

Conscience, resolve, loyalty, the kind of far sight that Mia wanted, the fearlessness to cross strange borders, whatever it was that gave Alice the guts to stick up for herself when Tweedledum and Tweedledee informed her she wasn't real. — Helen Oyeyemi

I love taking things out of context and playing with them and chopping up rules. — Helen Oyeyemi

The cards spoke to a suspicion that many whose work is play can never be free of: that you can only flaunt your triviality for so long before punishment is due. — Helen Oyeyemi

So her missing person's poster features a girl with long hair and dreamy eyes that don't see the fracture coming. — Helen Oyeyemi

The more forcibly I'm made aware of the fact that I'll never be the kind of storyteller I most admire, the less I'll be troubled by that. I'll probably just become more myself. — Helen Oyeyemi

I remember Mum repeatedly telling us we had good hearts and good brains. When she said that we'd say 'thanks' and it might have sounded as if we were thanking her for seeing us that way but actually we were thanking her for giving us whatever goodness was in us. — Helen Oyeyemi

Our favorite film is Vertigo. Amy Eleni and I must watch it seventeen or eighteen times a year, and with each viewing our raptness grows looser and looser; we don't need the visuals anymore
one or the other of us can go into the kitchen halfway through and call out the dialogue while making up two cups of Horlicks. From the minute you see empty, beautiful, blond Madeleine Elster, you know she is doomed because she exists in a way that Scottie, the male lead, just doesn't. You know that Madeleine is in big trouble, because she's a vast wound in a landscape where wounds aren't allowed to stay open
people have to shut up and heal up. She's in trouble because the film works to a plan that makes trauma speak itself out, speak itself to excess until it dies; this film at the peak of its slyness, when people sweat and lick their lips excessively and pound their chests and grab their hair and twist their heads from side to side, performing this unspeakable torment. — Helen Oyeyemi

Who's there?
Something old? Someone holy ... ? — Helen Oyeyemi

She looked at the last thing she had written and she felt calm. Then she crossed the words out vehemently, scribbling until even the shape of the sentence was destroyed. — Helen Oyeyemi

Rowan's physical effect- godlike jawline, long-lashed eyes, umber skin, rakish quiff of hair- is that of lightening strike. — Helen Oyeyemi

Aya overflows with acheor power. When the accent is taken off it, achedescribes, in English, bone-deep pain. But otherwise acheis blood..fleeing and returning ... red momentum. Acheis, acheis is is, kin to fear
a frayed pause near the end of a thread where the clothe matters too much to fail. The kind of need that takes you across water on nothing but bare feet. Ache is energy, damage, it is constant, in Aya's mind all the time. She was born that way
powerful, half mad, but quiet about it. — Helen Oyeyemi

The girl was lighter without her heart. She danced barefoot on the hot roads, and her feet were not cut by the glass or stones that studded her way. She spoke to the dead whenever they visited her. She tried to be kind, but they realised that they no longer had anything in common with her, and she realised it, too. So they went their separate ways. — Helen Oyeyemi

Her gamblder was in hospital. There'd been heavy losses at the blackjack table, his wife had discovered what he'd been up to, developed a wholly unexpected strength ("inhuman strength," he called it) broken both of his arms, and then moved in with a carpenter who'd clearly been keeping her company while he'd been out working on their finances. — Helen Oyeyemi

know the risk I run when I find fault with people more often than I look for something to appreciate. It's like having grit in your eye; you see less and less of the real person standing right in front of you and more and more of the grit in your eye. — Helen Oyeyemi

So she quit working to make sense of things - we don't realise it, but it's hard work we do almost every waking moment, building out thoughts and memories and actions around time, things that happened yesterday, and things that are happening right now, and what's coming tomorrow, layering all of that simultaneously and holding it in balance. — Helen Oyeyemi

The incongruous combination of white hair, beard, and powerful arms usually caused boys to scatter with the muddled impression that Father Christmas was angry with them. — Helen Oyeyemi

I think the soul must be heavy and smooth, Myrna: I deduce this from the buoyant, jerky movements of puppets, which lack souls. — Helen Oyeyemi

I don't have a style. I just try to write what the story demands. — Helen Oyeyemi

For my Mr. Fox
(whoever you are) — Helen Oyeyemi

All around them people were speaking a language Brown didn't understand; it was like silence with sharp edges in it. — Helen Oyeyemi

It was the usual struggle between one who loves by accepting burdens and one who loves by refusing to be one. — Helen Oyeyemi

I had never seen her wearing lipstick, but knew better than to say so in case she did that mysterious alchemy some girls do and transformed the comment into my accusing her of having gained weight. — Helen Oyeyemi

Aside from infrequent comments ("Cheer up, love," or "It's not Hallo'ween"), no one wondered why a teenager was dressed up as a chic governess. Sylvie approved of Miri, even at the same time as she was confused by her. "It's a style at least," she said, and took off her rope of pearls and looped them around Miri's neck. — Helen Oyeyemi

I'm greedy about cities - I like to form my impressions of them on my own, and on foot as far as possible, looking and listening, having conversations with bridges and streets and riverbanks, conversations I tend not to be aware of until a little later, when I find myself returning to those places to say hello again, even if only in memory. — Helen Oyeyemi

Why do people go to these places, these places that are not for them? It must be that they believe in their night vision. They believe themselves able to draw images up out of the dark. But black wells only yield black water. — Helen Oyeyemi

I was the "feelings" child. Everything I did was a feeling, and it did not count. It is so difficult to talk about demons and gods and spirits without it seeming that you are mad, or sarcastic, or simple, or talking in pictures, or trying to confuse. Or trying to be interesting. It is difficult to talk about demons and make it understood that even if "spirit" is the best word available, it isn't the right word. — Helen Oyeyemi

The wooden devil got a good laugh out of the ones who passed by, though. They were so funny she couldn't even feel sorry for them. They tried so hard to keep track of time. Whenever they were together they couldn't let sixty of their minutes pass without asking each other what time it was; as if time was a volatile currency that they either possessed or did not possess, when in fact time was more of a fog that rose inexorably over all their words and deeds so that they were either forgotten or misremembered. — Helen Oyeyemi

Please tell a story about a girl who gets away."
I would, even if I had to adapt one, even if I had to make one up just for her. "Gets away from what, though?"
"From her fairy godmother. From the happy ending that isn't really happy at all. Please have her get out and run off the page altogether, to somewhere secret where words like 'happy' and 'good' will never find her."
"You don't want her to be happy and good?"
"I'm not sure what's really meant by happy and good. I would like her to be free. Now. Please begin. — Helen Oyeyemi

She doesn't complain about anything I do; she is physically unable to. That's because I fixed her early. I told her in heartfelt tones that one of the reasons I love her is because she never complains. So now of course she doesn't dare complain. — Helen Oyeyemi

I bought a brown-skinned glove puppet. He came with a little black briefcase and his hair was parted exactly down the middle. The precision of his parting made me uneasy; somehow it was too human at the exact same time as exposing his status as a nonhuman. — Helen Oyeyemi

On a dais in a London church, the Virgin Mary sits suprised by a rough crest of candlelight. The discomforture isn't in her expression but in the fluid form her carving takes, the way peaceful eyes rest in sockets that threaten to release them. Either the wood is eccentrically soft, or this sculpture remains a tree, alert
(despite careful varnishing and a wide, warning ring of sacred space around it)
to a propensity to burn. — Helen Oyeyemi

You come without papers because you have been unable to prove that you are useful to anyone, and when you arrive they put you in prison and if you are unable to prove that you have suffered they send you back. — Helen Oyeyemi

have liked for him to say my name again, though. You know how it is when someone says your name really well, like it means something that makes the world a better place. In Louis Chen's case, he sometimes says my name as if it were a lesser-known word for bacon. — Helen Oyeyemi

She was poised and sympathetic, like a girl who'd just come from the future but didn't want to brag about it. — Helen Oyeyemi

Once you let people know anything about what you think, that's it, you're dead. Then they'll be jumping about in your mind, taking things out, holding them up to the light and killing them, yes, killing them, because thoughts are supposed to stay and grow in quiet, dark places, like butterflies in cocoons. — Helen Oyeyemi

Later in the morning Miranda opened her wardrobe and found it full of clammy ghosts that hovered around her body when she put them on. The cold trickled down in the gaps between the material and her chest. Scarecrow girl. She felt proud and nauseous, chosen and moulded by hands that froze. — Helen Oyeyemi

I love character and voice, and my favourite books have been the ones in which I've become completely absorbed. — Helen Oyeyemi

[i]We were fighting so very hard and achieving so very little aside from staying alive. BUT THAT'S EVERYTHING, my father wrote to me, when I told him that in a letter.[/i] — Helen Oyeyemi

Bisi, how could you, now? You know that when you pray, you are heard, if not by God, then by yourself. When you pray, you tell yourself what you truly want, what you really need. And once you know these things, you can do nothing but go after them. Sae you understand? — Helen Oyeyemi

She was an ordinary librarian, innocent of any crime, but one day she fell into a giant paint box and has been on the run from the fashion police ever since ... — Helen Oyeyemi

All through dinner Arturo and I held hands under the table like a couple of kids, and that made the dinner quite wonderful, even though Mrs. Fletcher kept staring at Olivia as though committing her to memory. It got so bad that Olivia turned to her husband and said: Has it happened at last, Gerald? Have I become a curiosity? — Helen Oyeyemi

A library at night is full of sounds: the unread books can't stand it any longer and announce their contents, some boasting, some shy, some devious. — Helen Oyeyemi

And that was what all the expressions felt like - masks. I didn't believe them. They were too thorough, too nuanced; they were never at odds with his subject matter. — Helen Oyeyemi

Young men ... learn practical skills that set is in good stead for lives as the husbands of wealthy and educated women: Strong Handshakes, Silence, Rudimentary Car Mechanics, How to Mow the Lawn, Explosive Displays of Authority, Sport and Nutrition Against Impotance. — Helen Oyeyemi

The question is, were they born in love with each other, these twins, or did it blossom? At any rate it's already happened, the onlookers agree. It must have. Ask them when they fell. The brother and sister say no, no, it's nothing like that, but what they mean is they can't remember when. — Helen Oyeyemi

She was a daughter of the Virgin of Montserrat, and she felt instinctively and of course heretically that the Virgin herself was only a symbol of a yet greater sister-mother who was carefree and sorrowful all at once, a goddess who didn't guide you or shield you but only went with you from place to place and added her tangible presence to your own when required. — Helen Oyeyemi

I always wanted to be a writer! But I wanted to do other things, too - be a psychologist, a librarian, et cetera. Now I've decided that reading fiction that features characters who are in those professions will do. — Helen Oyeyemi

Were those exact words said: 'I no longer love you'?"
"No."
"No. Hardly anybody ever says it like that, do they? They simply become unkind. — Helen Oyeyemi

The way I live now is that I only write, which means that I'm very poor but very happy. Everything in my life is the way I want it to be. — Helen Oyeyemi

School is one long illness with symptoms that switch every five minutes so you think it's getting better or worse. But really it's the same thing for years and years. — Helen Oyeyemi

Marriage is no real excuse for not loving. — Helen Oyeyemi

I think her favorite thing about our ... collaboration was her actor and musician friends rubbing shoulders with my academic colleagues, she liked the atmosphere of challenge, the way anything that came under discussion could be claimed or rejected by either side. Time and time again the power of an idea or a piece of art was assessed by either its beauty or its technique or its usefulness, and time and time again my wife was surprised by how rarely anything on earth satisfies all three camps. — Helen Oyeyemi

It was much more difficult to be alarmed by the events of a day that was almost over. — Helen Oyeyemi

It sort of rocks you . . . reading it is sort of like reading from a cradle hung up in the trees, and the trees rock you with such sorrow, and as the volume turns up you realize that the trees are rocking you whilst deciding whether to let you live or die, and they're sorry because they've decided to smash you to pieces . . ." "But — Helen Oyeyemi

However awful the storm of my disappointment, it's a response that belongs to me. It's my heart, after all. My territory, my kingdom. And since I'm the only one with the authority to surrender it, I can also take it back. — Helen Oyeyemi

Maybe she grew one more in the night and that's why the night sleep was so deep, it was a matching pair of sleeps. - — Helen Oyeyemi

I don't think anything can help me socially, to be honest: I have this terrible personality. I don't really know how to describe it ... maybe I'll go with surly. — Helen Oyeyemi

I've been so afraid of getting closeness wrong, because I don't know how to do it, because I don't know what my mistakes reveal
maybe they reveal very good reasons for my having been unloved as a child, I just don't know. — Helen Oyeyemi

The way that people feel changes everything. Feelings are forces. They cause us to time travel. And to leave ourselves, to leave our bodies. I would be that kind of psychologist who says, 'You're absolutely right - there are monsters under the bed.' — Helen Oyeyemi

She had a new bracelet on, stacked with emeralds brighter than her eyes. I hate rich people. — Helen Oyeyemi