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 OKRITo see the madness and yet walk a perfect silver line. … That’s what the true story-teller should be: a great guide, a clear mind, who can walk a silver line in hell or madness.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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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.
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In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.
BEN OKRI -
The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.
BEN OKRI -
The 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.
BEN OKRI -
I am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people.
BEN OKRI -
When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.
BEN OKRI -
The worst realities of our age are manufactured realities. It is therefore our task, as creative participants in the universe, to re dream our world. The fact of possessing imagination means that everything can be re dreamed. Each reality can have it
BEN OKRI -
Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
BEN OKRI -
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.
BEN OKRI -
Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends’ floors, was happy, was miserable.
BEN OKRI