What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours Quotes

“It was the usual struggle between one who loves by accepting burdens and one who loves by refusing to be one.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“A library at night is full of sounds: the unread books can't stand it any longer and announce their contents, some boasting, some shy, some devious.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“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 up so quickly.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“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.

- Chunyang Hee

("sorry" doesn't sweeten her tea)”
― Helen oyeyemi , What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“She had to quickly pop back to the fifteenth century to find a word for how beautiful he was. The boy was makeless.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“I remember Mum repeatedly telling us we had good hearts and good brains. When she said that we'd say 'thanks' and it might have sounded as if we were thanking her for seeing us that way but actually we were thanking her for giving us whatever goodness was in us.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“To have seen your lips and not ever kissed them would have been the ruin of me…”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Honoring delicacy over full disclosure only comes back to haunt you in the end.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“How will I know I've grown up? When I've started using words I didn't really know the meaning of. I said I did that already and she said yes but I worried about it and grown-ups didn't.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“There was such an interesting exchange rate in this woman's mind...whenever she remembered anyone giving her anything, they only gave a very little and kept the lion's share to themselves. But whenever she remembered giving anyone anything she gave a lot, so much it almost ruined her.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“cities are fueled by the listless agony of workers providing services to other workers who barely acknowledge those services.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“But then you’re put back together again, in a wholly different order . . .” “And it hurts so much you don’t know if the new order will work.” “It’ll heal. It has to hurt before it heals, don’t you think?” He”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“what they’d been afraid of was running out of self. On the contrary the more they loved the more there was to love.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“She’d call Montse to come and judge how well the picture was progressing. "Look here," she’d say, indicating a faint shape in the corner of the frame. "Look here –" Her fingertips glided over a darkening of colour in the distance. She sketched with an effort that strained every limb. Montse saw that the Señora sometimes grew short of breath though she’d hardly stirred. A consequence of snatching images out of the air – the air took something back.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“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.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“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”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Do you think that maybe we're able to love someone best when that person doesn't know how we feel?”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“He looked honored, extraordinarily honored, seeming to care for that which tore his flesh than he did for the flesh itself, embracing the blade as if it were some combination of marvel and disaster, the kind that usually either confers divinity or is a proof of it.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“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.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“A real writer has to be able to write about the body. They have to. It’s where we live.” So”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Wolves are hosting wedding feasts and witches are brushing their hair today.” Presence”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“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.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“She was a daughter of the Virgin of Montserrat, and she felt instinctively and of course heretically that the Virgin herself was only a symbol of a yet greater sister-mother who was carefree and sorrowful all at once, a goddess who didn't guide you or shield you but only went with you from place to place and added her tangible presence to your own when required.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“That inability to discover whether you jumped or were pushed brings about a deadened gaze and a downfall all it's own.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“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.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“As it is he hears voices without form; they sing and sing, as they have from the beginning and will continue until the end. Chad borrows their melodies: That's the music part of the songs he wrotes.For words Ched uses rhymes from our village, the kind that nobody pays attention to anymore because they advocate living by a code that will surely make you one of life's losers.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“I think the soul must be heavy and smooth, Myrna: I deduce this from the buoyant, jerky movements of puppets, which lack souls.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“According to Stendhal it takes about a year and a month to fall in love, all being well.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“The wooden devil got a good laugh out of the ones who passed by, though. They were so funny she couldn't even feel sorry for them. They tried so hard to keep track of time. Whenever they were together they couldn't let sixty of their minutes pass without asking each other what time it was; as if time was a volatile currency that they either possessed or did not possess, when in fact time was more of a fog that rose inexorably over all their words and deeds so that they were either forgotten or misremembered.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“A library at night is full of sounds: The unread books can’t stand it any longer and announce their contents, some boasting, some shy, some devious. But the sound I heard wasn’t the sound of a book.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours