Quotes from Helen Oyeyemi

Have you forgotten about our fox? The one who now had an eye for beauty, and an inclination to set it apart from other things . . .

I almost forgot to mention another fox I know of—a very wicked fox indeed. But you are tired of hearing about foxes now, so I won't go on.

A girl grew up in a field. Well, in a house, with her family, but the house was surrounded by stalks of wheat as tall as saplings. The girl's earliest memories are framed in breeze-blown green and gold. Ice and moonlight, sunshine and monsoon, the wheat was there, tickling her, tipping ladybirds and other pets into her lap

Mrs. Fletcher tells Mom over and over that she should be making more conversation with me, because apparently I'm at a "dangerous age." (She's got to be talking about menstruation. I haven't started yet, but there's probably some risk of bleeding to death if you're taken unawares the first time. I won't be caught unawares, though. That's not how I'm going out.)

At that time I had to keep meeting people and meeting people in case one of them was someone I could marry.

Safiye looked as if she was formed of fire herself, particles of flame dancing the flesh of her arm into existence. That or she was returning to fire.

It's only really appropriate in the event of a life-threatening emergency, "I love you." It means a different thing to us than it means to them. God knows what it means to them. God knows what it means to us.

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.

You can only take pictures like that if you're able to see ghosts.

Sometimes you laughed, and then my glove puppet would weep piteously. When you took the glove puppet he alternated between flirtatious and suicidal, hell-bent on flinging himself from great heights and out of the windows. I noticed that you didn't make a voice or a history for the puppet, but you became its voice and history. I'd have liked to admire that but felt I was watching a distressing form of theft, since the puppet could do nothing but suffer being forced open like an oyster.

Dad has what I think of as only child darkside syndrome; he does everything as if he is being watched.

Miss Foxe's other passion was fairy tales. She loved the transformations in them. Everybody was in disguise, or on their way to becoming something else. And all was overcome by order in the end. Love could not prevail if the order of the tale didn't wish it, and neither could hatred, nor grief, nor cunning. If you were the first of three siblings, then you were going to make a big mistake, and that was that. If you were the third sibling, you couldn't fail.

I met St. John at Clara Lee's soiree—she was great friends with my mother, and at that time I had to keep meeting people and meeting people in case one of them was someone I could marry.

lying is probably the most human gesture anyone can make, because humans all say one thing and do another

White is for witching, a colour to be worn so that all other colours can enter you, so that you may use them.

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

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.

I sat with my head in my hands, shaking. Because the situation was so much worse than I'd thought. My husband was trying to choose between me, his wife, and someone he had made up. And I, the real woman, the wife, had nothing on the made-up girl. We each had five points in our favour. That son of a bitch.

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. Snow

Their brothers are their heroes, and if anything happens to William Saunders or Robert Young, Kenneth and Larry might blame everyone around them, because we're the citizens those men will have died for, and maybe they won't believe we were worth it. Are we? Have we ever been worth it, any of the times before?

After half an hour the Senora emerged, short of breath, with flushed cheeks....as uf she'd been seized and shaken like a faulty thermometer.

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

The Soul Selects Her Own Society (Chapter 12 title)

Why do people go to these places, these places that are not for them?