Quotes from 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.

There was . . . a mirror that crawled across the wall in a wooden frame. When I go into Miri's room all I can see, all I can think of is that enormous mirror, like a lake on the wall.

The situation improved once it occurred to them that they should also talk; as they came to understand each other they learned that what they'd been afraid of was running out of self. On the contrary the more they loved the more there was to love

Her superpower was picking emotionally unavailable partners and she doubted she'd get a better offer

I don't know anything about light, from where it comes, nor where it goes I only want the light to light up. . .

Something terrible's coming, and everyone in the world is working to bring it on.

I was on my out and they thought they were helping me; instead they turned motion and intellible speech into a currency with which personhood is earned.

There's that difficulty with delirium too: You see it raging in another person's eyes and then it flickers out. That's the most dangerous moment; it's impossible to see something that's so swiftly and suddenly swallowed you whole.

If her fingers touched the photograph it was hers. If it was out of her reach then it belonged to the room.

The gingerbread recipe is one of the lean-year recipes, and it stands out because the lean-year recipes are all about minimizing waste and making that which is indigestible just about edible. None of it tastes good save the gingerbread, which is exactly as delicious as it has to be.

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.

Olivia made Mrs. Fletcher nervous. That was difficult to process. I'd recently come across a proverb about not speaking unless you'd thought of something better than silence. So I kept typing.

Sometimes our subconscious is so transparent it's boring

Isn't that what you thought you'd bought . . . affectionate obedience? Somebody who wouldn't feel any more or any less than you wanted her to feel, someone who'd love but not dare to—whatever it turns out I've dared to do. But really you shouldn't be surprised this happened; this is what you get for placing people in your debt in such a way that they can never repay it!

Do you think we'd still be standing here if he had shown up? What do you think we'd be doing here?' I asked. I got away with it because I put the question as if I was curious rather than just giving sass. But one of the boys told Louis, 'I guess your girlfriend likes to talk.

Perdita calls upon her mother to repent, and Harriet repenteth not. She points out that tryhards rarely get enough traction to make a significant nuisance of themselves

He was good-looking. Enough to make me feel uncomfortable. Tall and dark, etc.

He told me that the difference between him and other people was that other people would only think about kicking me in the shins whenever I used a long word, but he went ahead and took action.

Of course this is a mind-set that a nation can be stunned into. All you need is a century or two of freedoms and strictures that appear and disappear between one year and the next, words and deeds that were frowned upon just yesterday receiving vehement acclaim today

They looked around with drained faces and drank less than their friends did, barely wetting their lips so as to keep their secrets.

They were merchant families, mostly, descendants of Englishmen who'd gotten rich trading with the tsars and sultans and rajahs of long ago, then come over to America because all their money didn't stop the aristocrats from snubbing them. Now their great-grandchildren just made a few investments here and there and kept charitable institutions the way an average Joe keeps a pet.

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.

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. —CHUN YANG HEE

Collectively they were an embodiment of Cool Britannia before the concept had even had a name. And this set of parents certainly is one body—it's impossible to speak to any of them individually. Group communication or deafening silence . . . your choice. Harriet can see why the other parents don't bother with the PPA.