Quotes from Helen Oyeyemi

I was always a little disturbed by him because I'd never heard him tell a lie. That was horrifying to me, like living in a house with every door and window wide open all day long.

She wants to know how it feels to be absolutely sure that you haven't done anything wrong. She's not intimidated either—she doesn't believe for a second that these people aren't tryhards just like her. They're tryhards who succeed, that's all. Their striving is never past tense; it's merely concealed.

Dad and Lily would never have this, they would never be old together and think inside each other's clockwork.

It was snowing when I got off the bus at Flax Hill. Not quite regular snowfall, not exactly a blizzard. This is how it was: The snow came down heavily, settled for about a minute, then the wind moved it - more rolled it, really - onto another target. One minute you were covered in snow, then it sped off sideways, as if a brisk, invisible giant had taken pity and brushed you down.

He may have been told that a rakish grin works wonders. If so, he'd been getting bad advice.

And when Ambrose thought it over, it began to seem that really had been his subconscious project. Especially after he'd made contact with citizens of various countries who said they were Druhástranians. They all turned out to be people whose Druhástranianism was a nonviolent product of their alienation from every society currently known to them.

Kazim used to give me strange looks whenever I tapped a corner of one of his comic strips and asked what was next. He thought it was strange of me to ask. What's next is what happened before.

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 craze, 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.

The men look at Aunt Mia the way I might look at a hot fudge sundae in the hours between lunch and dinner. You know, when you're not sure if it's a good idea to go ahead -- you're interested beyond a shadow of a doubt, but you wonder if it might turn out to be a little too much for you. Men seem to realize that Aunt Mia's already making the most of herself.

These are thoughts that come to you while you spend however long you spend holding ice-packs to your eye, or tilting your head back against the wall to try to do something about the way your nose is bleeding, letting your mind work on the question: What reasons might somebody have for leaving her kid in the care of a man like Frank Novak?

Very few people can watch others endure humiliation without recognizing the part they play in increasing it.

I don't set too much store by dreams, but it's probably unwise to ignore this kind. These are the kind of dreams that show you you're not doing so well, that you haven't accepted what you thought you'd accepted, that you're a mess, lying there like you've been hit by a bus, your heart and mind standing over you tutting and trying to figure out what even happened, never mind fixing it.

If someone threatens to kill you for speaking up about something they've done, they must be feeling their guilt. So maybe that's how you know you're on the right track.

Several prominent thinkers have proposed reclassifying Druhástrana as a purely notional/mythical land since a) nobody seems to actually come from there or know how to get there and b) literal interpretations of the assertion that Druhástrana exists may be a profound mistranslation of Czech humor.

have liked for him to say my name again, though. You know how it is when someone says your name really well, like it means something that makes the world a better place. In Louis Chen's case, he sometimes says my name as if it were a lesser-known word for bacon.

Do you know what lobotomy is?" - "I think so. It's when they operate and remove parts of your brain, right?" - "Right. Boyfriends are the same thing. They shrink your brain. Any female who really wants to be able to think for herself shouldn't be wasting her time on boys.

I said that as far as I could gather it was a tale about a woman who could be led out of captivity only by a man, and that the man could save her only by ignoring her.

For some people love is like a king they swear allegiance to. That kind of person has to be released from one bond before they can begin to forge another one. All very conventional behavior, but fiercely interior convention. I'm not trying to imply that such people are wise or that they impress me -- I'm one of them, and it's probably the most futile form of integrity going. But if it's a side dish to other forms of integrity, then it's all right.

It was hard to keep a straight face, but Harriet didn't laugh. Everybody around her was living out a different story in which events had different causes and motivations according to how they were perceived.

Harriet didn't wish to see someone this passionate become a walking Druhástrana, cut off from the rest of the world.

I had to give her a C because she spoilt an otherwise thoughtful piece by suddenly concluding that the Church of England was Anne Boleyn's "fault." A Church is not the "fault" of anybody.

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

And in time, and by being a good woman, and a patient woman, she would have won a good and patient man.

Three creaks. She stepped three times. What is the meaning of it? Three creaks, three weeks? If she comes back for her shoes in three days, then I only need to empty them another three times. If it really is three weeks that were meant, what then. If three months, what then. Three years. That's why I had to write it down now. By then I may no longer believe I heard anything in Miri's room.