black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

I was told stories, we were all told stories as kids in Nigeria. We had to tell stories that would keep one another interested, and you weren’t allowed to tell stories that everybody else knew. You had to dream up new ones.

Ben Okri

When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.
BEN OKRI

Inventing Reality Stop Thing
One of the greatest gifts my father gave me – unintentionally – was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
BEN OKRI

Adversity Father Tranquil
Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories
BEN OKRI

Mad Silence Stories
We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
BEN OKRI

Definitions Destination Require Stop
To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.
BEN OKRI

Belief Quite Situation Something
What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.
BEN OKRI

Create Eventually Make People
Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
BEN OKRI

Enemy Expression Silence
I was going to be a scientist.
BEN OKRI

Dream Going Job Scientist
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.
BEN OKRI

Beautiful Despair Secret
Creativity is the art of the impossible
BEN OKRI

Art Creativity Impossible
This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
BEN OKRI

Down Grows Like
Maybe there are only three kinds of stories: those we live, those we tell, and those that help our souls fly upwards to a greater life.
BEN OKRI

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

Jazz Past Together
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 that goes past on which I don’t write poetry.
BEN OKRI

Circles Past Writing
If we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom.
BEN OKRI

Afraid Dancer Love Spirit
The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.
BEN OKRI

Attention Common Magic

I was told stories, we were all told stories as kids in Nigeria. We had to tell stories that would keep one another interested, and you weren’t allowed to tell stories that everybody else knew. You had to dream up new ones.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

I was told stories, we were all told stories as kids in Nigeria. We had to tell stories that would keep one another interested, and you weren’t allowed to tell stories that everybody else knew. You had to dream up new ones.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ben Okri Quotes