Helen Oyeyemi Quotes

I find myself really feeling like it's possible that maybe the greater contribution I'm going to be able to make through this next phase of my life might be as a writer writing wonderful parts for women, or even writing wonderful parts for myself, you know?

When I took off from Providence, my only professional aspiration was what it had always been: I wanted to be a sportscaster. By the time I landed in the desert, I knew I would spend the rest of my life trying to be a writer.

The idea of transformation - playing something I'm not - is the bit I enjoy most about acting.

One of the things I like about acting is that, in a funny way, I come back to myself.

In writing literary fiction, you are trying to help yourself. And readers are going to literary fiction not just to be entertained, but because they feel something else will happen; that the experience will take them beyond themselves and show them something they haven't seen before.

I wasn't the kind of kid like Spielberg or Lucas who knew to go to film school. I didn't know at 12 what I was going to do; it took me until I was about 23. I studied journalism in college, but after school, I got a job in public television and I never worked as a journalist for one moment.

I write because I have always been curious about what it would feel like to be someone else, in a different situation. Fiction is a wonderful way of exploring that.

Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people.

I wanted always to be a storyteller of the fullest expression.

I realized that I've always been a storyteller.

I want to be a part of stories.

I write to be the characters that I am not.

Writing stories, adopting other characters, making up fantastic stories and tales, this is a way of perhaps enhancing who I am. Writing stories takes a commonplace old life and makes it all somehow more interesting. And hopefully I can do that in a way that touches a lot of people in their lives, too.

I began writing fictional stories and little screenplays when I was in fifth grade.

I love to tell stories and this is my way of getting them down on paper.

Stories are the only thing that I can be bothered with. It's the only way that I can do anything, even if I'm quite useless. It's the only area in being human where I could be a little useful.

Storytelling is my currency. It's my only worth. The only thing of value I have in this life is my ability to tell a story, whether in print, orating, writing it down or having people acting it out.

Fiction is the study of the human condition under imagined circumstances.

To me, the most important thing is to tell a good story. If I can do that, I think that enlightenment, respect of nature, etc. follows.

Fiction is a report from the interior.

I like to think I put some of myself in every character.

I like going back and writing fiction.

I knew I wanted to be a writer at 13. Before that, I told everyone I was going to be an artist.

Writing gives me the opportunity to explore ideas, play with language, solve problems, use my imagination, and draw on my own childhood.

This is a cliche, but in fiction, I feel it is easier for me to get to some sort of truth, some kind of more honest writing.