Mr Fox Quotes

“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

“She doesn't want to see anyone. She's happy like that, I think. Always relieved at the end of a visit.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“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

“His eyes were very bright; they'd been like that since he'd begun talking about his subject. He looked like someone in love. Well, in love the way people were in old movies.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“My mother exaggerates as often as she can. I'm sure she would like nothing more than to be part of a Greek tragedy. She wouldn't even want a large part, she'd be perfectly content with a chorus role, warning that fate is coming to make havoc of all things.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

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

“Miss Foxe occasionally wondered if she spent her life approaching invisibility and had finally arrived at it.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“When Jonas came to the phone I asked him if he remembered that we used to kiss. "I remember," he said tersely. "Is that why you called?”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“Funny to do something and then realise the reason for it afterwards.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“If love diminishes, it quickly fails and rarely revives.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“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

“BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BUT NOT TOO BOLD, LEST THAT YOUR HEART’S BLOOD SHOULD RUN COLD.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“I needed words, lots of words to think about while I was going about the rest of the day. And I didn't want anything affected. I wanted nothing to do with those Romance languages. I wanted clipped words, full of common sense. Thoughts to wear beneath my thoughts. Allow, express, oath, vow, dismay, matter, splash, mollify. I liked those words. I liked saying them. I still do.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“Miss Foxe's other passion was fairy tales. She loved the transformations in them. Everybody was in disguise, or on their way to becoming something else. And all was overcome by order in the end. Love could not prevail if the order of the tale didn't wish it, and neither could hatred, nor grief, nor cunning. If you were the first of three siblings, then you were going to make a big mistake, and that was that. If you were the third sibling, you couldn't fail.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“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.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“He was good-looking. Enough to make me feel uncomfortable. Tall and dark, etc.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“While waiting for her to phone me at school I'd feel seconds bursting inside me and leaving clouds. That won't come again—it can't. I'll never have that with anyone else. I'll never even come close.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“He was talented, at an age when other boys were horrible kissers, just horrible and sloppy. I was fourteen then, and he was sixteen.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“Mary. If you were real I'd run away with you forever.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“Mr. Fox didn't come, he didn't come, he didn't.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“Now, St. John could have been born into his elegance. It's a dangerous kind of elegance—he doesn't raise his voice, he lowers it.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“At that time I had to keep meeting people and meeting people in case one of them was someone I could marry.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“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.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“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.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“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