Helen Oyeyemi Quotes

Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay.

We are like plants which have the one choice of being in or out of the light.

For the European who came from a community of congestion and confinement, the West was beyond dreaming; it must have inspired him to formulate an idea of the infinite. There he could walk through geologic time; he could see into eternity.

A tree forms itself in answer to its place and the light. Explain it how you will, the only thing explainable will be your explanation.” Sabbaths 1999 IV

All human affairs follow nature's great analogue, the growth of vegetation. There are three periods of growth in every plant. The first, and slowest, is the invisible growth by the root; the second and much accelerated is the visible growth by the stem; but when root and stem have gathered their forces, there comes the third period, in which the plant quickly flashes into blossom and rushes into fruit.

Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig.

The new growth in the plant swelling against the sheath, which at the same time imprisons and protects it, must still be the truest type of progress.

At the bottom of every leaf-stem is a cradle, and in it is an infant germ; the winds will rock it, the birds will sing to it all summer long, but the next season it will unfold and go alone.

The nature of life is to grow.

Sun is the reason And the world it will bloom 'Cause sun lights the sky And the sun lights the moon

Like a mountain that's growing.

I realized that a tree never says, "I have too many branches." It simply digs deeper roots, expands itself to catch more light, and extends itself in multiple directions so as not to be unevenly weighted.

I am always searching for more light and space.

Surely a man needs a closed place wherein he may strike root and, like the seed, become. But also he needs the great Milky Way above him and the vast sea spaces, though neither stars nor ocean serve his daily needs.

What do the botanists know? Our lives should go between the lichen and the bark. The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind. We are still being born, and have as yet but a dim vision of sea and land, sun, moon, and stars, and shall not see clearly till after nine days at least.

Life is a movement outward, an unfolding.

We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.

It takes time for an acorn to turn into an oak, but the oak is already implied in the acorn.

Oh! To be a flower Nodding in the sun, Bending, then upspringing As the breezes run.