Ben Okri Quotes

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, Suffering

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

Away, Attention, Both

Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
Ben Okri

Fear, Heart, Conquer

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

Best, Beautiful, Secret

Our time here is magic! It's the only space you have to realize whatever it is that is beautiful, whatever is true, whatever is great, whatever is potential, whatever is rare, whatever is unique, in. It's the only space.
Ben Okri

Time, Great, Beautiful

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

Life, Down, Through

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

Best, Writing, Writer

The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.
Ben Okri

Human, Tell, Fact

Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
Ben Okri

Art, Nothing, Magic

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

Politics, Art, Creativity

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

Success, Beauty, Fighting

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

Change, Stress, Long

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

Else, Another, Keep

I know that human beings are capable of anything.
Ben Okri

Human, Capable, Beings

Reading, like writing, is a creative act. If readers only bring a narrow range of themselves to the book, then they'll only see their narrow range reflected in it.
Ben Okri

Book, Writing, Creative

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, Made, Cannot

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

Happy, Friends, Miserable

I was going to be a scientist.
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

Home, Literature, London

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

Life, Poetry, Past

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

Important, Writing, Thought

One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity. We had a bit of a rollercoaster life with some really challenging financial periods. He was always unshaken, completely tranquil, the same ebullient, laughing, jovial man.
Ben Okri

Life, Courage, Greatest

The greatest religions convert the world through stories.
Ben Okri

Greatest, Through, Stories

The higher the artist, the fewer the gestures. The fewer the tools, the greater the imagination. The greater the will, the greater the secret failure.
Ben Okri

Failure, Secret, Artist

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

Future, Past, Together

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Biography

Nationality: Nigerian

Type: Poet

Born: March 15, 1959

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