What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours Quotes

“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. From ‘Rice’ by Chun Yang Hee”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“times the girl offered her hand, her mother refused it. 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

“There's that difficulty with delirium too: You see it raging in another person's eyes and then it flickers out. That's the most dangerous moment; it's impossible to see something that's so swiftly and suddenly swallowed you whole.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“I don't know anything about light, from where it comes, nor where it goes I only want the light to light up. . .”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Her superpower was picking emotionally unavailable partners and she doubted she'd get a better offer”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“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”
― 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. —CHUN YANG HEE”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Lucy happily settled down to work. First she sent for papyrus and handmade a book leaf by leaf, binding the leaves together between board covers. Then she filled each page from memory, drew English roses budding and Chinese roses in full bloom, peppercorn-pink Bourbon roses climbing walls and silvery musk roses drowsing in flowerbeds. She took every rose she'd ever seen, made them as lifelike as she could (where she shaded each petal the rough paper turned silken), and in these lasting forms she offered them to Safiye.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Other things my best friend said to me: That two years was but a short span.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“I was on my out and they thought they were helping me; instead they turned motion and intellible speech into a currency with which personhood is earned.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Rowan's physical effect- godlike jawline, long-lashed eyes, umber skin, rakish quiff of hair- is that of lightening strike.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“There was a framed photograph hung on the wall in front of me, and when I said your name I saw you in the picture. Well, I saw your back, and your ling, bright ponytail fluttering. The image is black and white, and you're running, and you cast a number of shadows that cluster about you like a bouquet. There's a figure running a little ahead of you and at first that figure seems to be a shadow too, except that it casts a backward glance that establishes an entirely separate personality. The figure's features are wooden, but mobile-some sort of sprite moves within, not gently, but convulsively. A beauty that rattles you until you're in tears, that was my introduction to Rowan Wayland. You and the puppet-I decided it was a puppet- were leaping through an open door, and in the corner of that distant room was a cupboard, fallen onto its side There was a sign on the cupboard door. (I tilted my head: The sign read TOYS.)
It's a photo in which lines abruptly draw back from each other and the ceilings and floors spin off in different directions, but for all the world that's pictured doesn't seem to be ending. You were both running in place, you blurred around the edges, and the puppet hardly blurred at all, and the puppet was looking back, not at you, but at me. It felt like the two of you were running for your lives, for fear I'd take them Or you could've been racing eaxh other home. TOYS, the sign reads, but signs aren't guarantees. Either way I wanted to go too, and wished the puppet would hold out its hand to me, or beckon me, or do something more than return my gaze with that strange tolerance”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“No, I found her. I know she doesn't look like a puppet, but she is one. I know it because when I first picked her up I said something I'd never said before. I put her down and when I picked her up I said the thing again without meaning to, and again it was something I hadn't said before, even though the words were the same. What's her routine? At the moment she only asks this one queation, but I'm hoping to learn how to get her to ask another. What's her question? Is your blood as red as this? A chess piece asking a personal queation, possibly one of the most personal questions that could be asked.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Sometimes you laughed, and then my glove puppet would weep piteously. When you took the glove puppet he alternated between flirtatious and suicidal, hell-bent on flinging himself from great heights and out of the windows. I noticed that you didn't make a voice or a history for the puppet, but you became its voice and history. I'd have liked to admire that but felt I was watching a distressing form of theft, since the puppet could do nothing but suffer being forced open like an oyster.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“I bought a brown-skinned glove puppet. He came with a little black briefcase and his hair was parted exactly down the middle. The precision of his parting made me uneasy; somehow it was too human at the exact same time as exposing his status as a nonhuman.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Well, she keeps an eye on big journeys from the interior to the exterior, or vice versa. She's there for the steps that takes you from one state to another. She's someone you see at crossroads, for instance. Well, you sort of see her but don't register what you've seen until it's too late to go back. She holds three keys...some say they're keys to the underworld, others that they're access to the past, present,and future. Picture the image of me fixed inthis doorway, and also in every other doorway you pass, sometimes tgree dimensional and sometimes vaporous, whatever I feel being at the moment you try to get past me. Imagine not being able to stop me from coming in, imagine not being able to cast me out because I own all thresholds. As an additional bonus, imagine me with three faces. That's who we're sending to have a little chat with Matyas Füst.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Tyche's beauty is interestingly kinetic; it comes and goes and comes back again. Or maybe it's more that you observe it in the first second of seeing her and then she makes you shelve that exquisite first expression for a while so she can get on with things. Then in some moment when she's not talking or when she suddenly turns her head it hits you all over again. There's a four-star constellation on her wrist that isn't always there either. When it is, its appearance goes through various degrees of permanence, from drawn on the kohl to full tattoo.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“After half an hour the Senora emerged, short of breath, with flushed cheeks....as uf she'd been seized and shaken like a faulty thermometer.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“The stormy night turned the window of Lucy's room into a door;”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Safiye looked as if she was formed of fire herself, particles of flame dancing the flesh of her arm into existence. That or she was returning to fire.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Was turning it this way and that in order to catch fireflies in the billowing, transparent left sleeve of her gown.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“And she told Monste all about it as she poured coffee into vases for them both. (It was true! It was true!)”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“A house of stone and glass and iron should be stark and sober, a watchtower from which a benevolent guard is kept over society. But the white stone of this particular house rippled as if reacting to a hand that had found its most pleasurable point of contact.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“The incongruous combination of white hair, beard, and powerful arms usually caused boys to scatter with the muddled impression that Father Christmas was angry with them.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“The night she met Safiye she stole her earrings right out of her earlobes and, having retired to a quiet corner of the mansion to inspect them, found that the gems were paste. Then she discovered that her base metal bangle was missing and quickly realized that she could only have lost it to the person she was stealing from; she’d been distracted by the baubles and the appeal of those delicate earlobes. Cornered by a banker whose false memory of having been in love with her since matriculation day might prove profitable, Lucy wavered between a sensible decision and a foolhardy one. Ever did foolhardiness hold the upper hand with Lucy; she found Safiye leaning against an oil lantern and saw for herself that she wasn’t the only foolish woman in the world, or even at that party, for Safiye had Lucy’s highly polished bangle in her hand and was turning it this way and that in order to catch fireflies in the billowing, transparent left sleeve of her gown. All this at the rise of being set alight, but then from where Lucy stood Safiye looked as if she was formed of fire herself, particles of flame dancing the flesh of her arm into existence. That or she was returning to fire.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Yes, but that’s personal preference and our desire to honor what’s ours, Day,” Hilde said. “I know,” said Day. “And I do. But I want to read everything. When it comes to books and who can put things in them and get things out of them, it’s all ours. And all theirs too. So we go in, see what books they have, take a few and replace them with a few of ours.” “No”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Yes—no. Creaking. A rusty handle turning, or a wooden door forced open until its hinges buckle, or to me, to me it was the sound of something growing. I sometimes imagine that if we could hear trees growing we'd hear them...creak...like that. I knocked again, and the creaking stopped, but a silence began. A silence I didn't feel good about at all. But I felt obliged to do whatever I could do...if I left a door closed and it transpired that somebody might have lived if I had only opened it in time...I couldn't bear that...so I had to try the door no matter what.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Her gamblder was in hospital. There'd been heavy losses at the blackjack table, his wife had discovered what he'd been up to, developed a wholly unexpected strength ("inhuman strength," he called it) broken both of his arms, and then moved in with a carpenter who'd clearly been keeping her company while he'd been out working on their finances.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“She found Safiye leaning against an oil lantern out in the garden and saw for herself that she wasn't the only foolish woman in the world, or even at that party, for Safiye had Lucy's highly polished bangle in her hand and was turning it this way and that in order to catch fireflies in the billowing, transparent left sleeve of her gown.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“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