What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

by Helen Oyeyemi

The situation improved once it occurred to them that they should also talk; as they came to understand each other they learned that what they’d been afraid of was running out of self. On the contrary the more they loved the more there was to love.

He was impressed by her assumption of responsibility for him and she was struck by the novelty of its never occurring to him to blame anybody else for his problems.

According to Stendhal it takes about a year and a month to fall in love, all being well.

To you who eat a lot of rice because you are lonely To you who sleep a lot because you are bored To you who cry a lot because you are sad I write this down. Chew on your feelings that are cornered Like you would chew on rice. Anyway life is something that you need to digest. —CHUN YANG HEE

The not-so-hidden charms of a man who takes his time over every detail . . . especially once you distract him for just long enough to turn all his attention onto you.

He’d been told that the key to a real apology was the identification of one’s real mistake.

Don’t you ever think that one day you might miss something really important, Arjun, she’d say. Something that someone can only say one time?

this was England after all, where minding one’s own business is a form of civil religion.

People in her immediate vicinity somehow sensed what she could do for them and reached for her without really thinking about it, then clung to her, friends, family, and strangers, making use of her without perceiving that they were doing so, clinging so tightly that her ribs all but cracked.

It was the usual struggle between one who loves by accepting burdens and one who loves by refusing to be one.

“To pominulo; stejně může i tohle.” That went by; so can this.

I don’t know anything about light, from where it comes, nor where it goes I only want the light to light up . .

Ah, really, it was too annoying how bold these ones were when they were in each other’s company and how timid they were when apart.

And yet he couldn’t be persuaded to perform on demand; no, he would give looks that asked Arkady to perceive the distinction between artist and mere entertainer.

He was like a boy in a fairy tale; there was a set of steps he was to follow with no concession whatsoever as to how others viewed his actions.

The boy was makeless.

Honoring delicacy over full disclosure only comes back to haunt you in the end.

She’d been looking for an answer to a question she had regarding the effects of a particular type of explosion, but the temptation to test her model on a bunch of fatheads was too strong.

bigarurre

New favorite word

Ed was working on a piece about hierarchies of knowledge for female love interests in the early issues of her favorite comic books; how very odd it must be to operate within a story where you’re capable, courageous, droll, at the top of your field professionally and yet somehow still not permitted the brains to perceive that the man you see or work with every day is exactly the same person as the superhero who saves your life at night. “Seems like someone behind the scenes clinging to the idea that the woman whose attention you can’t get just can’t see ‘the real you,’ no?”

hey Lois

Sometimes, when Marie and Willa spoke together in French, glancing around as they did so, Day felt that they were disparaging her mode of dress, but Ed had reassured her that that was just how people who could only speak English naturally responded to fluent French speakers.

😂

With boys there was a fundamental assumption that they had a right to be there—not always, but more often than not. With girls, Why her? came

According to Dornička, cities are fueled by the listless agony of workers providing services to other workers who barely acknowledge those services.

And everybody in the city is just so terribly bored. Show a city dweller wonders and they’ll yawn, or take a photo and send it to somebody else with a message that says “Wow.”

Our Dornička had decided that once you reach your late fifties you can wear whatever you want and nobody can say anything to you about it.

Hotel Glissando, it’s called, and it’s niche in a way that’ll take a while to describe.