I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends’ floors, was happy, was miserable.
BEN OKRIThe Nigerian storyteller Ben Okri says that ‘In a fractured age, when cynicism is god, here is a possible heresy: we live by stories, we also live in them.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
BEN OKRI -
It is not important for me as a writer that you leave a piece of writing of mine with either an agreement or even a resonance with what I have said. What is important is that you leave with the resonance of what you have felt and what you thought in reaction to that.
BEN OKRI -
Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
BEN OKRI -
One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits.
BEN 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 OKRI -
This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
BEN OKRI -
A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.
BEN OKRI -
There is a kind of expressed love which is easy to subvert. When a figure is loved for their deeds, their conquests, their heroism, their goodness, their love of the people, these are easy enough to destroy… But there is a kind of love which is felt for apparently no reason…
BEN OKRI -
The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us.
BEN OKRI -
There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
BEN OKRI -
Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery. Even if you lose, or are defeated by things, your triumph will always be exemplary. And if no one knows it, then there are places that do.
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 OKRI -
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. It’s the only space.
BEN 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 OKRI -
I learned that life will go through changes – up and down and up again. It’s what life does.
BEN OKRI