black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.

Ben Okri

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.
BEN OKRI

Children Dream Kids
Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
BEN OKRI

Enemy Expression Silence
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

Discovery Dream Exemptarty Stone Thing
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

Around Destiny Expected Riddle Way
Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.
BEN OKRI

Inspiring Night Water
The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.
BEN OKRI

Attention Common Magic
To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.
BEN OKRI

Anyone Home Homeless
I know that human beings are capable of anything.
BEN OKRI

Capable Humans Knows
Don’t try and press it down. Don’t hide from it. Don’t escape. It is life too. It is truth. But it will pass and time will put a strange honey in the bitterness. That’s the way life goes.
BEN OKRI

Escape Life Press Strange
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
This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
BEN OKRI

Down Grows Like
If we are true, if we can love, if we have vision, if we can have courage, we can, we should, we ought to, we will.
BEN OKRI

Power Should Vision
I was going to be a scientist.
BEN OKRI

Dream Going Job Scientist
When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity’s chief instrument.
BEN OKRI

Chaos Deities Eras
The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.
BEN OKRI

Karma Law Simple
Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
BEN OKRI

Art Hide Magic Nothing

When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ben Okri Quotes