01c. 1984 ADHe honestly expected her to believe that she could make a bad offering and her ancestors wouldn't mind.Helen Oyeyemi / quote ↗
02c. 1984 ADOther things my best friend said to me: That two years was but a short span.Helen Oyeyemi / quote ↗
03c. 1984 ADLucy 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 / quote ↗
04c. 1984 ADI’m never sad when a friend goes far away, because whichever city or country that friend goes to, they turn the place friendly. They turn a suspicious-looking name on the map into a place where a welcome can be found. Maybe the friend will talk about you sometimes, to other friends that live around him, and then that’s almost as good as being there yourself. You’re in several places at once! In fact, my daughter, I would even go so far as to say that the further away your friends, and the more spread out they are the better your chances of going safely through the world…Helen Oyeyemi / quote ↗
05c. 1984 ADI think it's swell that there are people you don't have to worry about when you don't see them for a long time, you don't have to wonder what they do, how they're getting along with themselves. You just know that they're all right, and probably doing something they like.Helen Oyeyemi / quote ↗
06c. 1984 ADShe 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 / quote ↗
07c. 1984 ADWith 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 / quote ↗
08c. 1984 ADShe had to quickly pop back to the fifteenth century to find a word for how beautiful he was. The boy was makeless.Helen Oyeyemi / quote ↗
09c. 1984 ADShe 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 / quote ↗
10c. 1984 ADYoung men ... learn practical skills that set is in good stead for lives as the husbands of wealthy and educated women: Strong Handshakes, Silence, Rudimentary Car Mechanics, How to Mow the Lawn, Explosive Displays of Authority, Sport and Nutrition Against Impotance.Helen Oyeyemi / quote ↗
11c. 1984 ADIt was the usual struggle between one who loves by accepting burdens and one who loves by refusing to be one.Helen Oyeyemi / quote ↗
12c. 1984 ADI 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 / quote ↗
13c. 1984 ADAll through dinner Arturo and I held hands under the table like a couple of kids, and that made the dinner quite wonderful, even though Mrs. Fletcher kept staring at Olivia as though committing her to memory. It got so bad that Olivia turned to her husband and said: "Has it happened at last, Gerald? Have I become a curiosity?Helen Oyeyemi / quote ↗
14c. 1984 ADSo she quit working to make sense of things— we don’t realise it, but it’s hard work we do almost every waking moment, building out thoughts and memories and actions around time, things that happened yesterday, and things that are happening right now, and what’s coming tomorrow, layering all of that simultaneously and holding it in balance.Helen Oyeyemi / quote ↗
15c. 1984 AD[i]We were fighting so very hard and achieving so very little aside from staying alive. BUT THAT’S EVERYTHING, my father wrote to me, when I told him that in a letter.[/i]Helen Oyeyemi / quote ↗
16c. 1984 ADThe cards spoke to a suspicion that many whose work is play can never be free of: that you can only flaunt your triviality for so long before punishment is due.Helen Oyeyemi / quote ↗
17c. 1984 ADWhy do people go to these places, these places that are not for them?It must be that they believe in their night vision. They believe themselves able to draw images up out of the dark.But black wells only yield black water.Helen Oyeyemi / quote ↗
18c. 1984 ADJess couldn't stop spitting out words, because they were words like blades to hurt, and if she swallowed them, she'd be scraped hollow.Helen Oyeyemi / quote ↗
19c. 1984 ADThe 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 / quote ↗
20c. 1984 ADMostly, when Jess didn't want to talk about her ideas in class, Colleen thought that Jess was showing off, making sure that she would be coaxed and pleaded with, but how could Jess have explained in a coherent way that she was scared? 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 / quote ↗
21c. 1984 ADBut also . . . I have plenty of people around me to talk to, and no one to be honest with.Helen Oyeyemi / quote ↗
22c. 1984 ADThis 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 / quote ↗
23c. 1984 ADWhat do you want, Mary Foxe? My husband?" “I believe in him," she said slowly. I wondered if she’d ever told him that, and if so, what he had to say about it. Someone you made up turns around and tells you they believe in you— what response could you possibly make? The scenario is just plain weird. And really kind of impertinent on her part, too. If it happened to me I think I’d be speechless for the rest of my life.Helen Oyeyemi / quote ↗
24c. 1984 ADThis was a little house, with a ceiling that kept getting higher and higher, a hot place with no windows. This was anger.Helen Oyeyemi / quote ↗
