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.
BEN OKRIThe fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.
More Ben Okri Quotes
-
-
The higher the artist, the fewer the gestures. The fewer the tools, the greater the imagination. The greater the will, the greater the secret failure.
BEN 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 OKRI -
Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
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 -
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 -
To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.
BEN 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 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 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 strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.
BEN OKRI -
I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
BEN OKRI -
Don’t neglect the gold in your own back yard.
BEN OKRI -
To 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.
BEN 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 OKRI -
Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
BEN OKRI