298 Quotes by Helen Oyeyemi

Please tell me a story about a girl who gets away." I would, even if I had to adapt one, even if I had to make one up just for her. "Gets away from what, though?" "From her fairy godmother. From the happy ending that isn't really happy at all. Please have her get out and run off of the page altogether, to somewhere secret where words like 'happy' and 'good' will never find her." "You don't want her to be happy and good?" "I'm not sure what's really meant by happy and good. I would like her to be free. Now. Please begin.

I wish there was someone I could have written to after that, someone I could have written to explain how awful it was to have someone touch you, then look at you properly and change his mind.

People underestimate the freckled.

She wants to see good hearts and good brains put to proper use, but I’m not convinced that everybody ought to live like that, or even that everybody can.

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

It occurred to me that I was unhappy. And it didn’t feel so very terrible. No urgency, nothing. I could slip out of my life on a slow wave like this – it didn’t matter. I don’t have to be happy. All I have to do is hold on to something and wait.

She retained the opinions of trees: one of them being that it was best not to have anything to do with human folk. “Firstly, they cut us down,” Rowan said. “Secondly they’re all insane, though I suppose they can’t help that, being rooted in water instead of earth.

This girl had been looking on with her hair hanging over her face, only partly hiding a cruel-looking scar; her eyes shone with hatred. Not necessarily hatred of your father or of puppets or the other children, but a hatred of make-believe, which did not heal, but was only useful to the people who didn’t need it.

However awful the storm of my disappointment, it’s a response that belongs to me. It’s my heart, after all. My territory, my kingdom. And since I’m the only one with the authority to surrender it, I can also take it back.