“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 from A Menina Icaro
“Two hungry people should never make friends. If they do, they eat each other up. It is the same with one person who is hungry and another who is full: they cannot be real, real friends because the hungry one will eat the full one. You understand?”
― Helen Oyeyemi, quote from A Menina Icaro
“Would that be dangerous, to not look while being looked at?”
― Helen Oyeyemi, quote from A Menina Icaro
“Finally, he smiled, and although his smile was bumpy because some of his teeth were jagged and broken, it was a warming, infectious smile that was reflected in his eyes. It made her smile widely in return. She felt as if the room had been lit up. He held out his arms, and she went across the room to him, almost running. She buried her face in his shirt, her nose wrinkling up as the scent of his cologne mixed with the nutty, sourish smell of camphor that filled the room. He put his arms around her, but gently, so that there was space between his forearms and her back, holding her as if she was to fragile to hug properly. Awkwardly, he patted her light, bushy aureole of dark brown hair, repeating: "Good girl. Fine daughter.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, quote from A Menina Icaro
“She had a new bracelet on, stacked with emeralds brighter than her eyes. I hate rich people.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, quote from A Menina Icaro
“But Jess was sliding breathlessly down into the waiting sky, so she couldn't find the words to tell TillyTilly that sisters was something about being held without hands, and the skin-flinch of seeing and simultaneously being seen.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, quote from A Menina Icaro
“Didn’t she know that knowing why doesn’t make things any less scary?”
― Helen Oyeyemi, quote from A Menina Icaro
“What’s the matter, Jess? Why are you sad?’ And she’d have to explain that she wasn’t sad, just tired, though how she could be so tired in the middle of the day with the sun shining and everything, she didn’t know. It made her feel ashamed.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, quote from A Menina Icaro
“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 from A Menina Icaro
Helen Oyeyemi
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“He tried to read, but the words swam in front of his eyes in meaningless waves. He put on the television. Nick at Nite, the cultural equivalent of aerosol cheese.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Deal Breaker
“You do trust Mr. Tugwell, do you not?”
Did he? Trust Tugwell with his secret? Perhaps. Trust him with Miss Keene? The man had fathered five children in six years. No, he did not trust Charles Tugwell with Miss Keene.”
― Julie Klassen, quote from The Silent Governess
“What happened to YOU old partner?" Lex asked him. "Suicide I take it?"
He frowned. "Worse - business school. Can you believe it? Two years of Croak, then one day the kid decided he wants to be the next Donald Trump. So we threw him in a car, dropped him off near Woodstock and now he think he spent the past two years in a drug-addled haze at some hippie commune.”
― Gina Damico, quote from Croak
“But reason... tells us that merely with repetition the extraordinary becomes ordinary, and only briefly abandoned, what had once passed for a common and ordinary occurrence becomes a portent:”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra
“You really are a bastard, aren't you? Christian Grey has nothing on you.
My name might be similar, but I'd never say "Laters, baby.”
― Jennifer Probst, quote from The Marriage Mistake
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This Shattered WorldBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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