Helen Oyeyemi

“Miranda nodded and her reflection nodded, so that was twice”

— Helen Oyeyemi

“ Who's there? Something old? Someone holy...? ”

— Helen Oyeyemi

“The Soul Selects Her Own Society (Chapter 12 title)”

— Helen Oyeyemi

“For my Mr. Fox (whoever you are)”

— Helen Oyeyemi

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

— Helen Oyeyemi

“Marriage is no real excuse for not loving.”

— Helen Oyeyemi

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

— Helen Oyeyemi

“ How can you know me and want to die? ”

— Helen Oyeyemi

This was a little house, with a ceiling that kept getting higher and higher, a hot place with no windows. This was…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“Was turning it this way and that in order to catch fireflies in the billowing, transparent left sleeve of her gown.”

— Helen Oyeyemi

“For reasons of my own I take note of the way people act when they’re around mirrors.”

— Helen Oyeyemi

I don't have a style. I just try to write what the story demands.

— Helen Oyeyemi

“You feel you’ve seen a hundred of me. You know how my tiny mind works. But maybe it goes both ways.”

— Helen Oyeyemi

“Why can't we kill this panic, or do the other thing and make it mute?”

— Helen Oyeyemi

“Oh, everyone’s got a view, haven’t they? .. Everyone’s got something to say," she’d tell me. ..”

— Helen Oyeyemi

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

— Helen Oyeyemi

“He was drinking Harriet's favourite, cold tea... not iced tea, but hot tea that had cooled. They liked him so much. They…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“Daphne came in with her arms full of books, and her eyes blazing like two poisoned moons. "How'd you like the mess…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“To the naked eye Boudicca is a haze of noxious green that lurks among fronds of seaweed looking exactly like the aftermath…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“I've read that madness is present when everything you see and hear takes on an equal significance. A dead bird makes you…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“How will I know I've grown up? When I've started using words I didn't really know the meaning of. I said I…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“She was much too thin. She was serene, like someone accustomed to sickness, someone who layed back to back with it in…

— Helen Oyeyemi

Her heart was heavy because it was open, and so things filled it, and so things rushed out of it, but still…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“No, this is pretty much the same version I read," I said, because it felt too damn late to back down. I…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“Sure, I’ve occasionally told Louis Chen that I hope a monster eats him, and he’s told me to go boil my head…

— Helen Oyeyemi

I think I started writing about identity, and I used to believe that identity is the story. But now I'm not so…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“His puppets have a nihilistic spirit, if you'd understand what I meant by that. Sometimes his puppets won't perform at all. He…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“Do you want this ice cream?" he asked her, whisking the dish all around the tabletop. "I mean, do you truly want…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“I bought a brown-skinned glove puppet. He came with a little black briefcase and his hair was parted exactly down the middle.…

— Helen Oyeyemi

I have been in love with Emily Dickinson's poetry since I was 13, and, like an anonymous post on findagrave.com says, 'Dear…

— Helen Oyeyemi

A few people have tried to make me see that my writing isn't quite their thing by saying to me: 'What about…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“There were days when she’d open her eyes and be him for six hours in a row; she knew all his secrets…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“I saw them in the dark, the girls, the women yet to be found. I counted their faces, gave them names and…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“Please tell a story about a girl who gets away.” I would, even if I had to adapt one, even if I…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“People don’t make too much money around here, but what comes with that is a different definition of what it means to…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“Sometimes I dream I'm falling, and it's not so much frightening as it is tedious, just falling and falling until I'm sick…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“When things are serious and either Amy Eleni or I need to beat our personal hysteric, the informal code is to seize…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“Everyone would believe her because at the back of their minds, everyone thinks that twin brothers and sisters grow up magnetized towards…

— Helen Oyeyemi

Like every girl, I only need to look up and a little to the right of me to see the hysteria that…

— Helen Oyeyemi

“Rowan told me about a girl who responded to all external stimuli except human touch. That, she did not feel at all,…

— Helen Oyeyemi