What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours Quotes

“It sort of rocks you . . . reading it is sort of like reading from a cradle hung up in the trees, and the trees rock you with such sorrow, and as the volume turns up you realize that the trees are rocking you whilst deciding whether to let you live or die, and they’re sorry because they’ve decided to smash you to pieces . . .” “But”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“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. I prayed that it was locked, but it opened and I saw the Señora standing by the window in the moonlight, with her back to me. She was holding a rose cupped in her hands, as if about to drink from it. She was standing very straight, nobody stands as straight as she was standing, not even the dancers at the opera house..."

"Dead?"

"No, she was just having a nap. Of course she was f*ing dead, Lucy.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Insofar as a purely transient construction of flesh and blood can remember (or foretell) what it is to be stone, Lucy understood the mountain’s wish to listen at the window of a den of gamblers and be warmed by all that free-floating hope and desolation.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Since neither of us needs sleep we take night buses, sharing earphones and listening to knitting podcasts. If anyone else on the bus notices anything about us they assume it’s because they’re drunk. I’ve”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours