Best of Helen Oyeyemi's "White is for Witching"

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi.

Painting above: Still life (c.1650) by Louise Moillon


When I looked at her, she smiled brightly. Incongruous smiles were sort of a nervous thing with Miranda, a way of protecting herself from consequences, I think. Just like putting sunglasses on, or opening up an umbrella.

p.5

Immediately he replied, "Yes I love you, and you are beautiful," pronouncing his words with a hint of impatience because they had been waiting in him a long time.

p.14

Lily was a bunch of crumpled pockets and Sylvie is a black dress, perfumed scarves, iron posture and whatever else turns a person into an atmosphere.

p.69

Grey eyes convince so well, burying the person they look at in truth like flung pebbles. But Miranda could never do that with her eyes; convince. Anyway she was never sure about anything.

p.108

When Eliot saw Jalil's sunflowers on the sitting-room mantlepiece, he asked where they had come from. She told him. A look of such extreme sarcasm crossed his face that Miranda rushed to him and covered his mouth with both hands before he could speak.

p.127

His manners were strange. He didn't speak to her, but he looked at her for longer than was polite, and she knew that they had met now, that everything real that had ever been going to happen to her would happen now.

p.136

"The girl doesn't get away. It's not a story about her getting away. She was born free."

p.192

Everything in the room was quietly powerful; leather-bound books, an antique globe, near-black wooden chairs and surfaces, stuff, richly-coloured drapes.

p.219 

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