Helen Oyeyemi famous quotes

I think, basically, what I'm good for is reading - a lot.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Reading #Thinking

I see all mythology as one tradition, a way of disseminating knowledge that must come to us in code so that we can live sanely with it, since some forms of knowledge are too dark, or too complex, to be plainly spoken. And so we have these weird (and also sometimes entertaining and surprising and heartening) tales that belong to all of us.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Dark #Way #Sometimes

I wish there was someone I could have written to after that, someone I could have written to explain how awful it was to have someone touch you, then look at you properly and change his mind.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Mind #Wish #Looks

It's true that writing can give new forms to concepts that existed previously with far less clarity, but in terms of the other half of a story's story - the way a story is received and interpreted and used - the audience plays a part in that too.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Writing #Play #Giving

Please tell me 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 of 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

#Girl #Running #Godmother

Magic is an exercise of a pattern of thought (sometimes represented by a gesture, ritual, or the calling of a true name) that results in manifestation/s. But these patterns of thought can have so much to do with whimsy that magic often is jokes.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Exercise #Names #Magic

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

#Perfect #Alive #Saws

The language of [Catholic] mysticism - its repeated attempts to lay consciousness itself bare and speak all the intensely opposing yet interconnected parts of it that cannot be spoken.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Catholic #Language #Consciousness

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

#Disappointment #Heart #Storm

The first coffee of the morning is never, ever, ready quickly enough. You die before it’s ready and then your ghost pours the resurrection potion out of the moka pot.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Morning #Coffee #Firsts

I do tend to feel more connected to dead writers, perhaps because they have finished their work.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Feels #Connected

Because things grow. Wherever there is air and light and open space, things grow.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Light #Air #Space

Fairy tales, because they have a very clear structure, are easier to interfere with. Also they have this really weird logic: the kind of logic that you only really experience when youre not feeling very well, or as a child.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Children #Feelings #Fairy Tale

You don’t return people’s smiles—it’s perfectly clear to you that people can smile and smile and still be villains.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#People #Return #Villain

Wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. The poem tells me it’s no big deal that I’m not like Snow. I can be another thing; I’m meant to be another thing.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Snow #Made #Bigs

Sometimes I feel weird about time. Sometimes I feel that it doesnt go in the order we perceive it. There are... repetitions that maybe we decide not to notice because it is simpler. I like to pick up on those moments.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Order #Sometimes #Moments

Nobody ever warned me about mirrors, so for many years I was fond of them, and believed them to be trustworthy. . .
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Mirrors #Years #Trustworthy

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

#Reading #Character #Fiction

Because he says he can't stand you and you act like you can't stand him, and whenever a man and a woman behave like that toward each other, it usually means something's going on.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Crush #Mean #Men

I dont have a style. I just try to write what the story demands.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Writing #Style #Trying

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

#Hero #Missing #Old Lady

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

#Chopping #Of Context

Like every girl, I only need to look up and a little to the right of me to see the hysteria that belongs to me, the one that hangs om a hook like an empty jacket and flutters with disappointment that I cannot wear her all the time. I call her my hysteric, and this personal hysteric of mine is designer made (though I'm not sure who made her), flattering and comfortable, attractive even, if you're around people who like that sort of thing. She is not anyone, my hysteric; she is blank, electricity dancing around a filament, singing to kill.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Girl #Disappointment #Hysteria

Imagine having a mother who worries that you read too much. The question is, what is it that's supposed to happen to people who read too much? How can you tell when someone's crossed the line.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Mother #People #Worry

If you should find yourself in a place that is indifferent to you and there is someone there that your spirit stretches to, then that person is kin.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Finding Yourself #Spirit #Should

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

#Butterfly #Dark #Thinking

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

#Beautiful #Wise #Princess

And she walked away, and she walked away, and that was that, and that was that.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

Solitary people, these book lovers. I think it's swell that there are people you don't have to worry about when you don't see them for a long time, you don't have to wonder what they do, how they're getting along with themselves. You just know that they're all right, and probably doing something they like.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Book #Thinking #Worry

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

#Girl #Heart #Cutting

In Narnia a girl might ring a bell in a deserted temple and feel the chime in her eyes, pure as the freeze that forces tears. Then when the sound dies out, the White Witch wakes. It was like, I want to touch you, and I can touch you, now what next, a dagger?
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Girl #Eye #White

I know of witches who whistle at different pitches, calling things that don't have names.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Names #Different #Calling

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

#Miracle #Noses #Enough

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

#Country #Daughter #Cities

It occurred to me that I was unhappy. And it didn’t feel so very terrible. No urgency, nothing. I could slip out of my life on a slow wave like this—it didn’t matter. I don’t have to be happy. All I have to do is hold on to something and wait.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Waiting #Unhappy #Matter

Her heart was heavy because it was open, and so things filled it, and so things rushed out of it, but still the heart kept beating, tough and frighteningly powerful and meaning to shrug off the rest of her and continue on its own.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Powerful #Heart #Tough

This was a little house, with a ceiling that kept getting higher and higher, a hot place with no windows. This was anger.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Anger #House #Littles

Home is where your teapots are.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Home #Teapots

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

#Looks #Dangerous

That's the ideal meeting...once upon a time, only once, unexpectedly, then never again.
-- Helen Oyeyemi

#Once Upon A Time #Meetings

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

#People #Wish #Kind