Quotes from Helen Oyeyemi

By the middle of the next day, Madame de Silentio knew that Reynardine had been released. This wasn't due to any psychic connection; it was due to the local news.

But apparently it was the bed linen that changed her mind. Cool blue silk and cotton patchwork. When Dad laid the stitched pillowcase and duvet out for her on the sofa, the colours reminded her of something she'd never seen. She said to us, "Imagine everyone in the house—even people we don't know—all wrapped up safe in blue, like fishes. What fun . . .

Miri and I conferred and decided that we liked the tallness of the house, the way the walls shoot up and up with the certainty of stone

To you who eat a lot of rice because you are lonely To you who sleep a lot because you are bored To you who cry a lot because you are sad I write this down. Chew on your feelings that are cornered Like you would chew on rice. Anyway life is something that you need to digest. From 'Rice' by Chun Yang Hee

There are still days when I can only work out whether or not I'm upset by looking at my face.

How long had the Doc been crazy? I don't know. Quite some time, I guess. Don't worry. He was only a general practitioner.

The sedatives had done their work and she'd gone away and now she was coming home again. Exactly as if she'd been put in an envelope and posted abroad, then returned to sender

June was bread and nuts and berries.

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.

It seemed that every time Miranda looked at Eliot he had some of that bread in his mouth—with Luc's champagne marmalade, or mackerel, or honey, or butter.

It isn't magic," she said. "It's just that I'm well dressed. You men who try to tell me I'm a scarecrow or try to grab my arm but can't manage it, don't you understand that you're not really addressing me? It's more as if you're talking to a coat I'm wearing.

There are real books all around the house, everywhere. She could pick one up and in mere seconds she could be involved in something that makes her laugh and feel nervous and hot and cold and forgive the world its absurdity.

Since neither of us needs sleep we take night buses, sharing earphones and listening to knitting podcasts. If anyone else on the bus notices anything about us they assume it's because they're drunk. I've

I told Cambridge that I'd read it and now I've got to make it true.

Katherine, I could die horribly here in this chair, and my blood could spray all over the room and cover the pages of that fascinating book you're reading, and I believe, that you'd just wipe the worst away and keep going.

Life has changed a lot, you know. You didn't used to get all this food inside food inside food when I was a girl. The other day I was eating a mushroom and found it had been stuffed with prawns. I've got so many misgivings over this crazy, Boy. It's flying in the face of nature. A mushroom is a woodland fungus and a prawn comes from the sea. People have got no business stuffing one inside the other.

It was like dancing with a mask that was attached to a stick—she dared not lower it, no matter how tiring it was to hold the mask up. She was the ugly girl at the ball.

I wanted to ask her if she meant to spend the night here as well, but I didn't want her to say yes. It could be that she was in some kind of mood and just wanted a nap and my question might force her to adopt a stance. She does that, I've noticed; she lashes out when she thinks she's been given a cue.

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

Jennifer Silver lived quite long. She didn't die until 1994. A reason why Lily never felt motherless was that her mother was there with her, a door and a curtain away.

Miranda found sunflowers very ugly, and yellow made her so nervous that she suspected it was the cause of war.

She found a mirror and turned around in front of it with her arms held out in front of her. She was all there, all in one piece. Then what? What had she lost?

Mami answers and her voice is hoarse and thin, and i think fight me better than this .

Nobody ever warned me about mirrors, so for many years I was fond of them, and believed them to be trustworthy. I'd hide myself away in them, setting two mirrors to face each other so that when I stood between them I was infinitely reflected in either direction. Many, many me's. When I stood on tiptoe, we all stood on tiptoe, trying to see the first of us, and the last. The effect was dizzying, a vast pulse, not quite alive, more like the working of an automaton.