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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.

Ben Okri

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
Don’t neglect the gold in your own back yard.
BEN OKRI

Gold Neglect Yards
This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
BEN OKRI

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

Fiction Humanity Mean
Creativity is the art of the impossible
BEN OKRI

Art Creativity Impossible
There is a kind of expressed love which is easy to subvert. When a figure is loved for their deeds, their conquests, their heroism, their goodness, their love of the people, these are easy enough to destroy… But there is a kind of love which is felt for apparently no reason…
BEN OKRI

Fighting Heroism People
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
Success will never confuse you of scatter your spirit, but will make you fly higher into the good sunlight. Your life will always surprise you.
BEN OKRI

Good Higher Success Surprise
When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity’s chief instrument.
BEN OKRI

Chaos Deities Eras
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

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

Adversity Father Tranquil
Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
BEN OKRI

Art Magic Nothing
I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.
BEN OKRI

Country Home Literature
We are living in enchanted time. With our spirits right.
BEN OKRI

Enchanted Spirit Time
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.
BEN OKRI

Create History People Protected Transformer
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.
BEN OKRI

Law Police World

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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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ben Okri Quotes