298 Quotes by Helen Oyeyemi

Her gingerbread keeps and keeps. It outlasts all daintier gifts. Flowers wilt and shed mottled petals, mold blooms greenish-white on chocolate truffles, and Harriet’s gingerbread hunkers down in its tin, no more attractive than the day it arrived, but no more repellent either.

I hate that my life is teaching me that I can only be loved if I put my love out of reach and just drift above people until they love my remoteness.

Easy to see the solution when you’re not in the story, isn’t it.

That inability to discover whether you jumped or were pushed brings about a deadened gaze and a downfall all it’s own.

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?

A song called ‘Earth Angel’ played in her head all morning – also three trumpets and a piano.

Consent is a downward motion, I think – a leap or a fall – and whether they’ll admit it or not, even the most decisive people can find themselves unable to tell whether or not their consent was freely given. That inability to discover whether you jumped or were pushed brings about a deadened gaze and a downfall all its own.

Love is like a magic carpet with a mind of its own. You step on that carpet and it takes you places–marvelous places, odd places, terrifying places, places you’d never have been able to reach on foot. Yeah, love’s a real adventure! But you go where the carpet goes; after you’ve stepped onto it you don’t get to choose a goddamned thing.

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.