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
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
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
We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings. – Ben Okri
Home can be the friend you have been searching for all your life or the person you met once very briefly. – Ben Okri
Reading is an act of civilization; it’s one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the mind and builds castles of possibilities. – Ben Okri
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
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
We never think that our mothers will die. It was like suddenly an abyss opened at my feet – I was standing on nothing. It was the strangest thing. Her passing away ripped the solidity out of the world. – Ben Okri
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
When I write a poem, I go into a state of self-forgetfulness, and something higher takes over; I like to call it my best self. – 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
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 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
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
I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare. – 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
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
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 learned that life will go through changes – up and down and up again. It’s what life does. – Ben Okri
When you can imagine you begin to create and when you begin to create you realize that you can create a world that you prefer to live in, rather than a world that you’re suffering in. – Ben Okri
One of the greatest gifts my father gave me – unintentionally – was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity. – Ben Okri
