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)
Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger. View quote
Ben Okri
Don't read what everyone else is reading. Check them out later, cautiously. View quote
Ben Okri
To see the madness and yet walk a perfect silver line. ... That's what the true story-teller should be: a great guide, a clear mind, who can walk a silver line in hell or madness. View quote
Ben Okri
We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination. View quote
Ben Okri
This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down. View quote
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. View quote
Ben Okri
We can redream this world and make the dream come real. Human beings are gods hidden from themselves. View quote
Ben Okri
Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories. View quote
Ben Okri
What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them. View quote
Ben Okri
The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time. (Ben Okri)
a dream can be the highest point of a life. View quote
Ben Okri
If we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom. View quote
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. View quote
Ben Okri
Don't neglect the gold in your own back yard. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Ben Okri
I am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people. View quote
Ben Okri
The greatest religions convert the world through stories. View quote
Ben Okri
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. View quote
Ben Okri
To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something. (Ben Okri)
Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide. View quote
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. View quote
Ben Okri
The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like. View quote
Ben Okri
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. View quote
Ben Okri