Helen Oyeyemi Quotes

“The whole thing was so intense, so full of hurt that when I look back at it I squint. I want it forgotten.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“Love. I'm not capable of it, can't even approach it from the side, let alone head-on. Nor am I alone in this—everyone is like this, the liars. Singing songs and painting pictures and telling each other stories about love and its mysteries and marvelous properties, myths to keep morale up—maybe one day it'll materialize. But I can say it ten times a day, a hundred times, 'I love you,' to anyone and anything, to a woman, to a pair of pruning shears. I've said it without meaning it at all, taken love's name in vain and gone dismally unpunished. Love will never be real, or if it is, it has no power. No power. There's only covetousness, and if what we covet can't be won with gentle words—and often it can't—then there is force.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“As always, the soucouyant seemed more lonely than bad. Maybe that was her trick, her ability to make it so you couldn't decide if she was a monster.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“She is a double danger—there is the danger of meeting her, and the danger of becoming her. Does the nightmare of her belong to everyone, or just to me?”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“I love sleeping. Waking is more and more hateful the older I get. I say this as if I've lived too long. I'm twenty-two.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“I was so jealous it burned, and I knew I had to let it alone or I'd break something inside me.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“Maybe she was not really like that. It's just that I would prefer you to think that what happened to her was justified.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“Easy to see the solution when you're not in the story, isn't it.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“She won't forget or recover, she is inconsolable.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“She smiled with a scary energy, as if she had been told to at gunpoint.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“A song called 'Earth Angel' played in her head all morning—also three trumpets and a piano.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“And other times—too often, maybe—I don't dare have an opinion in case it upsets anyone.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“She had had such a strong feeling that she needed to talk to someone who would tell her some secret that would make everything alright. She had been unable to think who it was.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“Her heart's breaking. It breaks three times a week on account of people treating her so badly, and she knows that all you can do is laugh it off.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“Miranda waited, then said, 'But what will I do for a whole year?'

Neither of them answered her. She supposed the answer was, Get better. The thought of a slow and measured crawl back to health filled her with black sand.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“His heavy eyebrows lowered and he made some small, involuntary gesture with his hand that was recognisably superstitious, as if the words 'God forbid' had flowed into his body.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“I examined the portraits nearest to me but couldn't get past the sensation that here was the same man over and over, crouched in old boxes, readying himself to spit on my plate.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“One or the other of us said 'I can't,' and if it was me I don't know why because I wanted to. Maybe I'm just remembering it wrongly to help me get over the rejection.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“I'm not saying I'm amazing or anything, but I'm decent-looking. Why shouldn't a decent-looking girl expect to be kissed?”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“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.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“I was always weak in the head—that must be it. I can't seem to care anymore about what I'm supposed to do.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“Our exchanges always seem to turn into whatever he wants them to.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“Have you ever heard a note in someone's voice that said 'This is the end?' I heard it in the next words he said to me, and I stopped listening.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“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 . . .”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“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.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“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.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“What do you think of Poe?"

"He's awful. He was obviously . . . what's the term . . . 'disappointed in love' at some point. He probably never smiled again. The pages are just bursting with his longing for women to suffer. If he ever met me he'd probably punch me on the nose."

"I think Poe's quite good, actually. The whole casual horror thing. Like someone standing next to you and screaming their head off and you asking them what the fuck and them stopping for a moment to say 'Oh you know, I'm just afraid of Death' and then they keep on with the screaming.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“The water was so cold on her skin that it felt dry.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“She thought I hadn't seen her, but she's no good at hiding her intentions. She can't help tiptoeing around with a finger to her lips at key moments.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“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.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching