Quotes by Helen Oyeyemi

He honestly expected her to believe that she could make a bad offering and her ancestors wouldnt mind.

Other things my best friend said to me: That two years was but a short span.

Lucy happily settled down to work. First she sent for papyrus and handmade a book leaf by leaf, binding the leaves together between board covers. Then she filled each page from memory, drew English roses budding and Chinese roses in full bloom, peppercorn-pink Bourbon roses climbing walls and silvery musk roses drowsing in flowerbeds. She took every rose shed ever seen, made them as lifelike as she could (where she shaded each petal the rough paper turned silken), and in these lasting forms she offered them to Safiye.

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…

I think its swell that there are people you dont have to worry about when you dont see them for a long time, you dont have to wonder what they do, how theyre getting along with themselves. You just know that theyre all right, and probably doing something they like.

She found Safiye leaning against an oil lantern out in the garden and saw for herself that she wasnt the only foolish woman in the world, or even at that party, for Safiye had Lucys highly polished bangle in her hand and was turning it this way and that in order to catch fireflies in the billowing, transparent left sleeve of her gown.

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.

She had to quickly pop back to the fifteenth century to find a word for how beautiful he was. The boy was makeless.

She retained the opinions of trees: one of them being that it was best not to have anything to do with human folk. Firstly, they cut us down, Rowan said. Secondly theyre all insane, though I suppose they cant help that, being rooted in water instead of earth.

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.

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

I remember Mum repeatedly telling us we had good hearts and good brains. When she said that wed 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.

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?

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.

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.

[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]

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.

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.

Jess couldnt stop spitting out words, because they were words like blades to hurt, and if she swallowed them, shed be scraped hollow.

The wooden devil got a good laugh out of the ones who passed by, though. They were so funny she couldnt even feel sorry for them. They tried so hard to keep track of time. Whenever they were together they couldnt 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.