Ben Okri Quotes

Strange things are happening to us.’‘To our children.’‘They sayhe is looking for the spirit of Independence.’‘They say he is looking for himself.’‘For his ownspirit.’‘Which he lost when the white man came.
Ben Okri
I noticed that in a corner, across from where they ate with such innocent relish, sitting forlorn and abandoned, was the ghost of their son. He had lost both of his arms, one side of his face was squashed, and both his eyes had burst. He had bluish wings. He was the saddest ghost in the house.
Ben Okri
The highest kind of writing—which must not be confused withthe most ambitious kind…belongs to the realm of grace. Talent ispart of it, certainly; a thorough understanding of the secret laws,absolutely. But finding the subject and theme which is in perfectharmony with your deepest nature, your forgotten selves, your hiddendreams, and the full unresonated essence of your life—now thatcannot be reached through searching, nor can it be stumbled uponthrough ambition. That sort of serendipity comes upon you on alucky day. It may emerge even out of misfortune or defeat. You mayhappen upon it without realising that this is the work throughwhich your whole life will sing. We should always be ready. Weshould always be humble. Creativity should always be a form ofprayer.
Ben Okri
We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It's just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there. Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected.
Ben Okri
This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we’re born into stories. I say we’re also born from stories.
Ben Okri
Reading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is tastounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered tbefore, people you wouldn’t care to sit next to in a ttrain, people that don’t exist, places you’ve never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, tpainted into existence by the reader’s creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls tup the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive.
Ben Okri
A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation... Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.
Ben Okri
Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
Ben Okri
Understanding is a pure glass of water. All great truths have no taste. Hints of sweetness are coloured by the need for amazement.
Ben Okri
In a fractured age, when cynicism is god, here is a possible heresy: we live by stories, we also live in them. One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along the way, we are also living the stories we planted - knowingly or unknowingly - in ourselves. We live the stories that either give our lives meaning, or negate it with meaninglessness. If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change or lives.
Ben Okri
The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.
Ben Okri
Knowledge of self ought to be the great project of our lives. Knowing ourselves we will know others. Only by knowing ourselves can we begin to undo the madness we unleash on the world in our wars, our destruction of the environment, our divisions, our desire to dominate others, the poverty we create and exploit. Only through self-knowledge can we reverse the damage we do with all the worldly knowledge we have, which has been only a higher ignorance.
Ben Okri
He thought about how the camera makes one fall in love with an image of oneself, and perpetuates a false reality.
Ben Okri
I love your loneliness. It is brave. It makes the universe want to protect you.
Ben Okri
Do you know what the luckiest thing is?’‘No.’‘It is to be at home everywhere.
Ben Okri
Maybe true travel is not the transportation of the body, but a change of perception, renewing the mind.
Ben Okri
When we’ve been travelling around I’ve often thought: Oh, this would be a good place to be, and that would be an excellent place to live. And yet, after I’ve seen everything I’ve decided that home, wherever that may be, is the place for feelings of peace. And if I can be at peace with myself then that is the most important thing. I think travelling teaches one that.
Ben Okri
The intelligence that shaped the universe, shaped you. There is an inner part of us, for ever obscured, for ever mysterious, which is most alive during the process of composition. And that inner part, that inner glow, is timeless, and it functions beyond time. It drinks from deep waters. It has the stillness and the dance and the radiance of firmament. When one is most absorbed in the act of creation one almost feels that one is wandering in the great corridors of all minds. Creativity makes us part of it all.
Ben Okri
A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick.
Ben Okri
The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.
Ben Okri