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You don’t return people’s smiles—it’s perfectly clear to you that people can smile and smile and still be villains.

Helen Oyeyemi

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Helen Oyeyemi
Age: 39
Born: 1984
Born: December 10
Novelist
Writer
Helen Olajumoke Oyeyemi
Perfectly
Smile
Return
Clear
Stills
Still
Villains
People
Smiles
Villain

More quotes by Helen Oyeyemi

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Wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. The poem tells me it’s no big deal that I’m not like Snow. I can be another thing I’m meant to be another thing.
Helen Oyeyemi
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Imagine having a mother who worries that you read too much. The question is, what is it that's supposed to happen to people who read too much? How can you tell when someone's crossed the line.
Helen Oyeyemi
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There were days when he touched the tip of her nose and it was enough, a miracle of plenty.
Helen Oyeyemi
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I know of witches who whistle at different pitches, calling things that don't have names.
Helen Oyeyemi
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Would that be dangerous, to not look while being looked at?
Helen Oyeyemi
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I feel like an old lady my hero is Miss Marple.
Helen Oyeyemi
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I always wanted to be a writer! But I wanted to do other things, too - be a psychologist, a librarian, et cetera. Now Ive decided that reading fiction that features characters who are in those professions will do.
Helen Oyeyemi
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And she walked away, and she walked away, and that was that, and that was that.
Helen Oyeyemi
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Once you let people know anything about what you think, that's it, you're dead. Then they'll be jumping about in your mind, taking things out, holding them up to the light and killing them, yes, killing them, because thoughts are supposed to stay and grow in quiet, dark places, like butterflies in cocoons.
Helen Oyeyemi
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Sometimes I feel weird about time. Sometimes I feel that it doesnt go in the order we perceive it. There are... repetitions that maybe we decide not to notice because it is simpler. I like to pick up on those moments.
Helen Oyeyemi
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I think, basically, what I'm good for is reading - a lot.
Helen Oyeyemi
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I see all mythology as one tradition, a way of disseminating knowledge that must come to us in code so that we can live sanely with it, since some forms of knowledge are too dark, or too complex, to be plainly spoken. And so we have these weird (and also sometimes entertaining and surprising and heartening) tales that belong to all of us.
Helen Oyeyemi
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So many times I've encountered people who are just kind of like, 'Yeah, Nigeria,' and, you know, thump their chest and seem very sure of, like, being Nigerian. And I'm just kind of, like, I wish I could be that sure.
Helen Oyeyemi
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Home is where your teapots are.
Helen Oyeyemi
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Nobody ever warned me about mirrors, so for many years I was fond of them, and believed them to be trustworthy. . .
Helen Oyeyemi
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In Narnia a girl might ring a bell in a deserted temple and feel the chime in her eyes, pure as the freeze that forces tears. Then when the sound dies out, the White Witch wakes. It was like, I want to touch you, and I can touch you, now what next, a dagger?
Helen Oyeyemi
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Because things grow. Wherever there is air and light and open space, things grow.
Helen Oyeyemi
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And without further argument he unsheathed the sword and cleaved Miss Foxe's head from her neck. He knew what was supposed to happen. He knew that this awkward, whispering creature before him should now transform into a princess - dazzlingly beautiful, free, and made wise by her hardship. That is not what happened.
Helen Oyeyemi
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Magic is an exercise of a pattern of thought (sometimes represented by a gesture, ritual, or the calling of a true name) that results in manifestation/s. But these patterns of thought can have so much to do with whimsy that magic often is jokes.
Helen Oyeyemi
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I dont have a style. I just try to write what the story demands.
Helen Oyeyemi