“Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.”

I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.

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.

One of the greatest gifts my father gave me – unintentionally – was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.

The greatest religions convert the world through stories.

People like you enrich the dreams of the worlds, and it is dreams that create history. People like you are unknowing transformers of things, protected by your own fairy-tale, by love.

We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.

We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It’s just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there.

One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits.

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.

The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.

We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.

A man’s greatest battles are the ones he fights within himself.

We are living in enchanted time. With our spirits right.

The acknowledged legislators of the world take the world as given. They dislike mysteries, for mysteries cannot be coded, or legislated, and wonder cannot be made into law. And so these legislators police the accepted frontiers of things.

I was going to be a scientist.

I was told stories, we were all told stories as kids in Nigeria. We had to tell stories that would keep one another interested, and you weren’t allowed to tell stories that everybody else knew. You had to dream up new ones.

Real painters understand with a brush in their hand.

Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.

It’s not what you do but that kind of job you do that makes the difference.

The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping.

Lots of people talk to animals… Not very many listen, though… That’s the problem.

One of the things I’ve learned is to be receptive of feedback.

Competitions are for horses, not artists.

Breath is the king of mind.