Ben Okri Quotes

Understanding is a pure glass of water. All great truths have no taste. Hints of sweetness are coloured by the need for amazement.

One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.

One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity. We had a bit of a rollercoaster life with some really challenging financial per...

A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick.

Don't despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.

When you can imagine you begin to create and when you begin to create you realize that you can create a world that you prefer to live in, rather than a world that you're suffering in.

The higher the artist, the fewer the gestures. The fewer the tools, the greater the imagination. The greater the will, the greater the secret failure.

I began my writing life as a poet, so poetry has always been fundamental. I evolved from poetry to journalism to stories to novels. But poetry was always there.

The best writing is not about the writer, the best writing is absolutely not about the writer, it's about us, it's about the reader.

Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.

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...

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.

Politics is the art of the possible creativity is the art of the impossible.

I am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people.

I was born left-handed, but I was made to use my other hand. When I was writing 'Famished Road,' which was very long, I got repetitive stress syndrome. My right wrist collapsed, so I started using my...

The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.

I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day...

The worst time was 1983. Love and life and everything went wrong. I reached absolute rock bottom. I saw the Minotaur at the bottom of the abyss. I learnt of the harshness of the world and its impartia...

Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.

Our time here is magic! It's the only space you have to realize whatever it is that is beautiful, whatever is true, whatever is great, whatever is potential, whatever is rare, whatever is unique, in....