Gingerbread Quotes

“More than friends, eh? More than friends... You know, my mother once told me that half of the hatred that springs up between people is rooted in this mistaken belief that there's any human relationship more sacred than friendship.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“All that happens when you grow up is that your ethics get completely compromised and you do extremely dodgy things you never imagined doing, apparently for the sake of others. Plus, growing up isn't in my job description.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“Her gingerbread keeps and keeps. It outlasts all daintier gifts. Flowers wilt and shed mottled petals, mold blooms greenish-white on chocolate truffles, and Harriet's gingerbread hunkers down in its tin, no more attractive than the day it arrived, but no more repellent either.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“On an evening when Perdita's away on a school trip, Harriet sits in front of her computer eating sample squares of lavender shortbread and practicing her favorite form of procrastination: writing highly positive reviews of her eBay, Etsy, and Amazon purchases. Five stars for everybody. She didn't finish one of the books she just gave five stars to. She just liked the author photo. Five stars for the portrait photographer, then. She's been doing this ever since some of her students told her they do this with one-star reviews. Opposing random negativity with random positivity - that's the main thing.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“The night passes slowly, as it must when your wish is that another's won't come true.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“He was drinking Harriet's favourite, cold tea... not iced tea, but hot tea that had cooled. They liked him so much. They liked the way he talked when he talked and they liked his quiet when he was quiet.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“Harriet Lee’s gingerbread is not comfort food. There’s no nostalgia into it, no hearkening back to innocent indulgences and jolly times at nursery. It is not humble, nor is it dusty in the crumb. [...] A gingerbread addict once told Harriet that eating her gingerbread is like eating revenge. ‘It’s noshing on the actual and anatomical heart of somebody who scarred your beloved and thought they’d get away with it,’ the gingerbread addict said. ‘That heart, ground to ash and shot through with dars of heat, salt, spice, and sulfurous syrup, as if honey was measured out, set ablaze, and trickled through the dough along with the liquefied spoon. You are phenomenal. You’ve ruined my life forever. Thank you”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“Handmade and heartfelt; Harriet wanted everything she did to be like this.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“There are several fine verses concerning Hope, including two that tend to come to mind whenever I hear the word. Both are the work of poets named Emily who were alive around the same time, so you can’t even say that one was channeling an Age of Pessimism. In one poem, hope is a wild, stubborn thing with feathers that darts into the lyric to be caressed on the understanding that nobody will try to tame it. In the other poem, hope is clammy and clinging and plays toxic mind games: Like a false guard, false watch keeping / Still, in strife, she whispered peace / She would sing while I was weeping / If I listened, she would cease. When you endure some poison in the hope that it’ll give rise to its own antidote, on what terms does that hope come to you . . . ?”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“And when Ambrose thought it over, it began to seem that really had been his subconscious project. Especially after he’d made contact with citizens of various countries who said they were Druhástranians. They all turned out to be people whose Druhástranianism was a nonviolent product of their alienation from every society currently known to them.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“But listen, listen . . . a mind-set that’s caught up in, even imprisoned by legality and correctness of form . . . what is that way of thinking if not Druhástranian? To be Druhástranian is to be dissatisfied with one’s condition until one can find some official personage to sign off on it.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“Gretel dreamed quite a Druhástranian dream. I mean, the absence of inclination to pass commentary, a reluctance to subscribe to any ideology in case the compromise proves catastrophic; those aren’t the only clues as to the Druhástranian nature of this dream. What about the fear that not having a point of view is in some way a crime? If this dream had been dreamed by a non-Druhástranian perhaps it would have had moral or spiritual overtones, or nationalist ones, or Gretel would have dreamed we were in a psychiatric hospital being treated for this chronic lack of a point of view.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“Several prominent thinkers have proposed reclassifying Druhástrana as a purely notional/mythical land since a) nobody seems to actually come from there or know how to get there and b) literal interpretations of the assertion that Druhástrana exists may be a profound mistranslation of Czech humor.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“She wants to know how it feels to be absolutely sure that you haven’t done anything wrong. She’s not intimidated either—she doesn’t believe for a second that these people aren’t tryhards just like her. They’re tryhards who succeed, that’s all. Their striving is never past tense; it’s merely concealed.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“She never was able to surrender a feeling without a review of its peaks and low points.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“Half of the hatred that springs up between people is rooted in their mistaken belief that there is any human relationship more sacred than friendship.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“To be Druhástranian is to be dissatisfied with one’s condition until one can find some official personage to sign off on it. And if someone says that what you’re doing is all right today, won’t you need to get that approval reconfirmed later, get another stamp at some other desk a year from now? Of course this is a mind-set that a nation can be stunned into. All you need is a century or two of freedoms and strictures that appear and disappear between one year and the next, words and deeds that were frowned upon just yesterday receiving vehement acclaim today.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“Not some sham family, politely avoiding having to care about one another, but people who would share a surname and the task of weaving a collective meaning into that name. People would support and protect and staunchly cherish one another.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“You tell me what it is when some sensation leaves you for the space of one heartbeat and returns at double strength.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“Kenzilea Kercheval. MD, had a Romany's working knowledge of many places in the world that are said not to exist.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“Harriet didn’t wish to see someone this passionate become a walking Druhástrana, cut off from the rest of the world.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“It was hard to keep a straight face, but Harriet didn’t laugh. Everybody around her was living out a different story in which events had different causes and motivations according to how they were perceived.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“Isn’t that what you thought you’d bought . . . affectionate obedience? Somebody who wouldn’t feel any more or any less than you wanted her to feel, someone who’d love but not dare to—whatever it turns out I’ve dared to do. But really you shouldn’t be surprised this happened; this is what you get for placing people in your debt in such a way that they can never repay it!”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“Of course this is a mind-set that a nation can be stunned into. All you need is a century or two of freedoms and strictures that appear and disappear between one year and the next, words and deeds that were frowned upon just yesterday receiving vehement acclaim today”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“Harriet read more voraciously than Simon and Margot ever had. They discouraged this; she’d be so bored once she ran out of texts that were new to her. She surprised them with the discovery that once an avid reader runs out of books, she reads people. Harriet read everybody she met, and when she met them again, she reread them.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“More than friends, eh? More than friends . . . You know, my mother once told me that half of the hatred that springs up between people is rooted in this mistaken belief that there’s any human relationship more sacred than friendship.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“Every member of this class is under the impression that they are thick, and every single one of them is the opposite. Passing the GCSE now probably won’t improve their job prospects or raise their estimation in the eyes of their family and friends.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“It is a veiling of alternatives, a way of making sure you don’t reject the choice Mother’s made for you. No matter what, you will not starve. She has a hunch that over the years, usage of this recipe has always fallen on the shadow side of things.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“Family lore has it that they entertained each other very well, the pragmatist and the man who was almost too gullible to live. One had more patience, and the other had more resolve, and they were about even when it came to daring, so their love established possibilities and impossibilities without keeping score.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

“To be precise, she doesn’t like the way her smile photographs as forced. So smiling’s out. But she doesn’t think she can sustain a sober look without seeming unfriendly, so she frequently switches between two expressions—one she thinks of as Alert and the other she thinks of as Accommodating, though she’s the only one who can tell the difference.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread