Ben Okri Quotes

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Ben Okri

Profession : Poet

Birth : March 15, 1959

You see, 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

I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends' floors, was happy, was miserable.

Ben Okri

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

Ben Okri

The greatest religions convert the world through stories.

Ben Okri

Politics is the art of the possible; creativity is the art of the impossible.

Ben Okri

Don'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 Okri

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

I was born left-handed, but I was made to use my other hand. When I was writing 'Famished Road,' which was very long, I got repetitive stress syndrome. My right wrist collapsed, so I started using my left hand. The prose I wrote with my left hand came out denser, so later on I had to change it.

Ben Okri

I know that human beings are capable of anything.

Ben Okri

To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.

Ben Okri

I am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people.

Ben Okri

The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.

Ben Okri

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

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

I learned that life will go through changes - up and down and up again. It's what life does.

Ben Okri

I believe in leavening. You can't have words sticking out too much, like promontories. They disturb the density. You have to flatten them, or raise the surrounding terrain.

Ben Okri

The worst time was 1983. Love and life and everything went wrong. I reached absolute rock bottom. I saw the Minotaur at the bottom of the abyss. I learnt of the harshness of the world and its impartiality to human failure.

Ben Okri

I began my writing life as a poet, so poetry has always been fundamental. I evolved from poetry to journalism to stories to novels. But poetry was always there.

Ben Okri

I study people all the time. For some reason, we're not very good at seeing what's there or hearing what we're hearing.

Ben Okri

The poem is never complete in the mind. It emerges, and then it's like an act of unveiling. The unveiling is the longest and most difficult part of it.

Ben Okri