Quotes From "Boy Snow Bird" By Helen Oyeyemi

All 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

But also .. . I have plenty of people around me to talk to, and no one to be honest with. Helen Oyeyemi

Because he says he can't stand you and you act like you can't stand him, and whenever a man and a woman behave like that toward each other, it usually means something's going on. Helen Oyeyemi

Life has changed a lot, you know. You didn't used to get all this food inside food inside food when I was a girl. The other day I was eating a mushroom and found it had been stuffed with prawns. I've got so many misgivings over this crazy, Boy. It's flying in the face of nature. A mushroom is a woodland fungus and a prawn comes from the sea. People have got no business stuffing one inside the other. . Helen Oyeyemi

No, this is pretty much the same version I read, " I said, because it felt too damn late to back down. I imagine that from time to time some similar situation has led governments to declare war." pg.57 Helen Oyeyemi

I think her favorite thing about our . collaboration was her actor and musician friends rubbing shoulders with my academic colleagues, she liked the atmosphere of challenge, the way anything that came under discussion could be claimed or rejected by either side. Time and time again the power of an idea or a piece of art was assessed by either its beauty or its technique or its usefulness, and time and time again my wife was surprised by how rarely anything on earth satisfies all three camps. . Helen Oyeyemi

School is one long illness with symptoms that switch every five minutes so you think it's getting better or worse. But really it's the same thing for years and years. Helen Oyeyemi

First you try to find a reason, try to understand what you've done so wrong so you can be sure not to do it anymore. After that you look for signs of a Jekyll and Hyde situation, the good and the bad in a person sifted into separate compartments by some weird accident. Then, gradually, you realize that there isn't a reason, and it isn't two people you're dealing with, just one. The same one every time. . Helen Oyeyemi

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

It was snowing when I got off the bus at Flax Hill. Not quite regular snowfall, not exactly a blizzard. This is how it was: The snow came down heavily, settled for about a minute, then the wind moved it - more rolled it, really - onto another target. One minute you were covered in snow, then it sped off sideways, as if a brisk, invisible giant had taken pity and brushed you down. Helen Oyeyemi

And I think I decided not to love Charlie because I thought I had to be rescued. For practical reasons but also as a proof of love. It's better that Charlie and I didn't make an automatic transaction, love exchanged for rescue. All you can do after that is put the love and the rescue up on the shelf, moving them farther and farther back as you make room for all the other items you acquire over the years. This way a ragged stem still grows between us, almost pretty. Though really we should crush it now, before the buds bloom skeletal. Helen Oyeyemi

I drew a chair up beside her and sang. All I do is dream of you the whole night through .. . It was a horrible rendition, and I quite enjoyed attempting it, setting the notes free from the song as each one went farther and farther astray. Helen Oyeyemi

It was one of those ones they call screwball comedies, where people mislead and ill-treat each other in the most shocking and baffling way possible, then forgive and forget about it because they happen to like the look of each other. Only they call it falling in love. Helen Oyeyemi