Helen Oyeyemi Quotes

There's no such thing as old age. I'm no different now than I was 50 years ago. I'm just having more fun.

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

We tend to think of age only in time, but I don't think it has much to do with time at all; there's a whole load of other things. I've met 16-year-olds who are old and 90-year-olds who are young.

… the third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority, the second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority, and the first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

No age is compelled to take its beauty from preceding epochs.

I don't like to be labeled, to be anything. I've made the mistake before myself of labeling my music, but it's counter-productive.

The ideas of an age are most abundant where they are not crowded by original ideas.

Age is just a number. When I started, I never worried about how long I was going to play. I had very specific goals, and that's what I really chased.

In choosing a hypothesis there is no virtue in being timid. I clearly would have been burned at the stake in another age.

From an early age I didn't buy into the value systems of working hard in a nine-to-five job. I thought creativity, friendship and loyalty and pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable was much more interesting.

Being young isn't about age, it's about being a free spirit. You can meet someone of 20 who's boring and old, or you can meet someone of 70 who's youthful and exciting. I met Fred Astaire when he was 72 and I was 21, and I fell in love with him. He certainly was a free spirit.

The reason is that for many years I have avoided reading anything whatsoever that approaches my own line of country, out of a somewhat fanatical desire to avoid the risk of unconscious imitation.

When a man fails to see the truth of certain generally accepted views, there is no law compelling him to provoke animosity by announcing his dissent.

Age is just a number for me! A person is as young as he feels.

I do not want to say I'm a product designer. I've been trying all my life to not be categorized, to learn something and then to forget about it.

Being able to provoke a different point of view to the standard current ideological or political perspective as played out in conventional newspaper or radio reportage is what a public intellectual does. But it's not merely about being oppositional, because that's too negative.

I used to object to being called an Indian writer, and would always say I was a writer who happened to be an Indian, and who happened to write about Indians.

I don't look my age, I don't feel my age and I don't act my age. To me age is just a number.

I think I have to remain eternally oblivious to age. Honestly, when you put a number on it yourself, it's just like, Why? Why do that?

We had a heroic attitude to artistic freedom, and we thought normal contracts were a bit vulgar - somehow not punk. But that was the whole point - we weren't a regular record label.

I wasn't overwhelmed by dogma, and that sort of freed me up to look at things differently.

As a film-maker, I certainly don't want to be put into some box.

They're never gonna not put you in a box. It's something that they have to do, because nine times out of 10 people don't understand creativity.

I've always felt that age is just a number - it's not how old or how young you are, it's how you conduct yourself.

People should be able to do what they want in life and not be judged or put in a box or a category.