black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.

Ben Okri

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

Inspirational Love Sympathy
There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
BEN OKRI

Art Humanity Three
People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
BEN OKRI

Healthy People Stories
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 OKRI

Office Perfect Writing
I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
BEN OKRI

Order Smile Squares
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

Dream Ocean Rocks
A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.
BEN OKRI

Able Men Sometimes
Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
BEN OKRI

Enemy Expression Silence
To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.
BEN OKRI

Anyone Home Homeless
Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
BEN OKRI

Art Magic Nothing
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

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

Adversity Father Tranquil
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

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

Definitions Destination Require Stop
I learned that life will go through changes – up and down and up again. It’s what life does.
BEN OKRI

Again Down Up Change
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

Agreement Important Writing

An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.

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An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.

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