You 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… — Ben Okri Copy Share Image
We never think that our mothers will die. It was like suddenly an abyss opened at my feet - I was standing on nothing.… — Ben Okri Copy Share
“In a fractured age, when cynicism is god, here is a possible heresy: we live by stories, we also live in them. One way… — Ben Okri Copy Share
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 Copy Share
Maybe there are only three kinds of stories: those we live, those we tell, and those that help our souls fly upwards to a… — Ben Okri Copy Share
The earliest storytellers were magi, seers, bards, griots, shamans. They were, it would seem, old as time, and as terrifying to gaze upon as… — Ben Okri Copy Share
The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like. — Ben Okri Copy Share
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… — Ben Okri Copy Share
Fire is one of my temperaments. It is behind all my work... Fire is a chemical presence. — Ben Okri Copy Share
I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends' floors, was happy, was miserable. — Ben Okri Copy Share
If we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom. — Ben Okri Copy Share
Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories — Ben Okri Copy Share
Literature doesn't have a country. Shakespeare is an African writer. His Falstaff, for example, is very African in his appetite for life, his largeness… — Ben Okri Copy Share
“So long as a canvas is empty its potential is infinite… The empty canvas can become a gateway into the landscape of nightmares or… — Ben Okri Copy Share
I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare. — Ben Okri Copy Share
