I know that human beings are capable of anything.
BEN OKRI
BEN OKRI
More from Ben Okri
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 OkriBen Okri Bad things will happen and good things too. Your life will be full of surprises. Miracles happen only where there has been suffering. So taste your grief to the fullest.
Ben OkriBen 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 OkriBen Okri There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
Ben OkriBen Okri Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories
Ben OkriBen Okri I’m fascinated by the mysterious element that runs through our lives. Everyone is looking out of the world through their emotion and history. Nobody has an absolute reality.
Ben OkriBen Okri I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
Ben OkriBen Okri Who knows, maybe this whole planet is an asylum, a penal realm. A place for hard cases.
Ben OkriBen Okri What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.
Ben OkriBen Okri 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 OkriBen Okri We can still astonish the gods in humanity And be the stuff of future legends, If we but dare to be real, And have the courage to see That this is the time to dream The best dream of them all.
Ben OkriBen Okri Reading, like writing, is a creative act. If readers only bring a narrow range of themselves to the book, then they’ll only see their narrow range reflected in it.
Ben OkriBen Okri Literature doesn’t have a country. Shakespeare is an African writer. His Falstaff, for example, is very African in his appetite for life, his largeness of spirit. The characters of Turgenev are ghetto dwellers. Dickens characters are Nigerians.
Ben OkriBen Okri People that don’t exist, places you’ve never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader’s creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive.
Ben OkriBen Okri Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
Ben OkriBen Okri To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.
Ben OkriBen Okri
Original quotes
From our community writers
When you are with your friends, control your tongue.
Stuart PetersonStuart Peterson And you have fast become my weakness, even as you remain my source of strength.
Alma-May NoaAlma-May Noa No one else is on your path so why should their limits be?
Elezabeth SymondElezabeth Symond I heard many tongues in many languages saying that people cannot be Gods, and that’s a given. But what if people don’t know what was given to them?
Nikol MejdnNikol Mejdn Pride – it screams a lot louder than love sometimes.
L.T. PhoenixL.T. Phoenix Messed up people even see the beauty in all the shitty places.
Lara-LeanLara-Lean I loved you more than love was allowed.
Lang LeavLang Leav Don’t mistake your discovery for the absence of yourself.
Sania AbbasSania Abbas
Meet the writers
More on humans
I foster a lot. Not humans, animals.
Bellamy YoungBellamy Young Maybe the lonely places are the only things that make human beings of us all.
Babs DealBabs Deal We humans have the capacity to wreak horrors on each other. But we also have the capacity to survive those horrors.
Barry LygaBarry Lyga Marches alone won’t bring integration when human respect is disintegratin
Barry McGuireBarry McGuire The evil is not that you cannot change human nature. The evil is that human nature cannot change you.
Barrows DunhamBarrows Dunham The goal is not writing. The goal is being a human being writing.
Barry B. LongyearBarry B. Longyear When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
Baron de MontesquieuBaron de Montesquieu Deep down, we remain human, very human and have all the desires to love and be loved by one person.
Basil HumeBasil Hume