298 Quotes by Helen Oyeyemi

Where do you see yourself in ten years’ time?” she asked. My answer: “Not sure, but maybe on a beach reading a really good mystery. Not a murder mystery, but the kind where the narrator has to find out what year it is and why he was even born .

I would like to have nothing to do with you for hours on end and then come back and find you, come back with things I’ve thought and found all on my own – on my own, not through you.

Do you think that maybe we’re able to love someone best when that person doesn’t know how we feel?

Lily was a bunch of crumpled pockets and Sylvie is a black dress, perfumed scarves, iron posture and whatever else turns a person into an atmosphere.

Fate is what it was. Yes, fate that the book I had with me was a novel written by my great-grandfather, a text you couldn’t read because my great-grandfather had put a permanent ban on any of his works being translated into English, Russian, or French. He was adamant that these three are languages that break all the bones of any work translated into them.

He kissed me like ice cream, like a jazz waltz, the rough, gentle way the sea washed sand off my skin on the hottest day of the year.

Be bad. Be wicked. And you should worry. But don’t.

Maybe she was not really like that. It’s just that I would prefer you to think that what happened to her was justified.

White-flowered shrubs thickened around her and so did sleep; it directed her limbs. Lie down now, sleep said sweetly. Lie down. These are the secret hours of the day, the time that owls and bats take to themselves. The stars change places now; let them. You lie down.