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Helen Oyeyemi Quotes


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Quotes by Helen Oyeyemi

Showing 1-10 of 36 Quotes by Helen Oyeyemi

Dickinson is my hero because she was a joker, because she would never explain, because as a poet she confronted pain, dread and death, and because she was capable of speaking of those matters with both levity and seriousness. She's my hero because she was a metaphysical adventurer.

~Helen Oyeyemi

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I do love Shirley Jackson, but I don't deserve to be named in connection with her. I remember reading 'The Haunting of Hill House' and having goosebumps for hours. The way she builds narrative pressure in that book is just amazing. I think you could reread it a few times and actually go out of your mind.

~Helen Oyeyemi

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The way 'The Icarus Girl' came about was by me just basically bragging it with a literary agent and telling him I'd written 150 pages when I'd only written 20. And I think it was when the agent e-mailed me back right the very next day after sending him the 20 pages and asking to see the other 130.

~Helen Oyeyemi

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I tend to prioritize emotional realism above the known laws of time and space, and when you do that, it's inevitable that strange things happen. Which can be quite enjoyable, I think.

~Helen Oyeyemi

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The way that people feel changes everything. Feelings are forces. They cause us to time travel. And to leave ourselves, to leave our bodies. I would be that kind of psychologist who says, 'You're absolutely right - there are monsters under the bed.'

~Helen Oyeyemi

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I sometimes get asked: 'How come the men in your stories don't have such strong characters?' And I'm like: 'I don't care.' I just want to find out about all the different lives a woman can live. But my feminism has never been against men. It's not erasure; it's just they're not the focus. In real life, they're quite nice.

~Helen Oyeyemi

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I do tend to feel more connected to dead writers, perhaps because they have finished their work.

~Helen Oyeyemi

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I love character and voice, and my favourite books have been the ones in which I've become completely absorbed.

~Helen Oyeyemi

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I can recommend wearing blue mascara whilst writing. I'm telling you, it really adds something.

~Helen Oyeyemi

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Sometimes I feel weird about time. Sometimes I feel that it doesn't 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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Biography

Nationality: British

Type: Novelist

Born: December 10th, 1984

Links

Find Helen Oyeyemi on Amazon

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