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 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 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 OKRIWho knows, maybe this whole planet is an asylum, a penal realm. A place for hard cases.
BEN OKRIPeople that don’t exist, places you’ve never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader’s creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive.
BEN OKRIDon’t read what everyone else is reading. Check them out later, cautiously.
BEN OKRIWe are living in enchanted time. With our spirits right.
BEN OKRIReading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn’t care to sit next to in a train.
BEN OKRII’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 OKRII learned that life will go through changes – up and down and up again. It’s what life does.
BEN OKRIBad things will happen and good things too. Your life will be full of surprises. Miracles happen only where there has been suffering. So taste your grief to the fullest.
BEN OKRIYou are a mischievous one. You will cause no end of trouble. You have to travel many roads before you find the river of your destiny. This life of yours will be full of riddles. You will be protected and you will never be alone.
BEN OKRIDon’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 OKRIDon’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 OKRIStories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
BEN OKRIWithout stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories
BEN OKRIAn inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.
BEN OKRI