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
BEN OKRI
More Ben Okri quotes
Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
Ben OkriBen Okri Don’t neglect the gold in your own back yard.
Ben OkriBen Okri What hope is there for individual reality or authenticity when the forces of violence and orthodoxy, the earthly powers of guns and bombs and manipulated public opinion make it impossible for us to be authentic and fulfilled human beings?
Ben OkriBen Okri I know that human beings are capable of anything.
Ben OkriBen Okri You are a mischievous one. You will cause no end of trouble. You have to travel many roads before you find the river of your destiny. This life of yours will be full of riddles. You will be protected and you will never be alone.
Ben OkriBen Okri 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 OkriBen Okri I learned that life will go through changes – up and down and up again. It’s what life does.
Ben OkriBen 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 OkriBen Okri Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
Ben OkriBen Okri People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
Ben OkriBen Okri 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 OkriBen Okri Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
Ben OkriBen Okri If you are working in an office, where do you find the time to write a novel? But you can finish a short story in five pages. Furthermore, a short story is a perfect place to learn the craft
Ben OkriBen Okri When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.
Ben OkriBen Okri If we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom.
Ben OkriBen Okri One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted – knowingly or unknowingly – in ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaninglessness. If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives.’
Ben OkriBen Okri