Ben Okri Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Reading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn’t care to sit next to in a train, people that don’t exist, places you’ve never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader’s creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive.

  Ben Okri

  Reading, Creativity, Character

  Ben Okri (2014). “A Way of Being Free”, p.24, Head of Zeus

  32 Copy quote

• An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.

  Ben Okri

  Darkness, Inner Darkness

  Ben Okri (1981). “The landscapes within”

  9 Copy quote

• It is easy to forget how mysterious and mighty stories are. They do their work in silence, invisibly. They work with all the internal materials of your mind and self. They become part of you while changing you. Beware the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.

  Ben Okri

  Night, Self, Water

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Perfection, Facts, Hints

  25 Copy quote

• People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.

  Ben Okri

  People, Healthy, Stories

  Ben Okri (2014). “A Way of Being Free”, p.60, Head of Zeus

  4 Copy quote

• If we are true, if we can love, if we have vision, if we can have courage, we can, we should, we ought to, we will.

  Ben Okri

  Power, Vision, Should

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Beautiful, Secret, Despair

  Ben Okri (2014). “Astonishing the Gods”, Head of Zeus

  19 Copy quote

• What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.

  Ben Okri

  People

  27 Copy quote

• The worst realities of our age are manufactured realities. It is therefore our task, as creative participants in the universe, to re dream our world. The fact of possessing imagination means that everything can be re dreamed. Each reality can have it

  Ben Okri

  Dream, Mean, Reality

  14 Copy quote

• There is a kind of expressed love which is easy to subvert. When a figure is loved for their deeds, their conquests, their heroism, their goodness, their love of the people, these are easy enough to destroy... But there is a kind of love which is felt for apparently no reason... A love, inspired, it seems, by the gods, which it is impossible to fight, distort, destroy, or weaken. In fact, the attempts to destroy such loves only strengthen them. And to do nothing allows them to continue to grow at their natural pace, inexoribly, till this love becomes a wide and silent adoration.

  Ben Okri

  Fighting, People, Heroism

  10 Copy quote

• 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, Reading, Writing

  11 Copy quote

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

  Ben Okri

  Fear, Heart, Telling Stories

  16 Copy quote

• I'm fascinated by the mysterious element that runs through our lives. Everyone is looking out of the world through their emotion and history. Nobody has an absolute reality.

  Ben Okri

  Life, Running, Reality

  16 Copy quote

• When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.

  Ben Okri

  Reality, Inventing

  Ben Okri (2014). “Astonishing the Gods”, Head of Zeus

  4 Copy quote

• The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.

  Ben Okri

  Karma, Simple, Law

  Ben Okri (2014). “Astonishing the Gods”, Head of Zeus

  28 Copy quote

• To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.

  Ben Okri

  Belief, Situation

  9 Copy quote

• Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.

  Ben Okri

  Art, Magic

  Ben Okri (2014). “A Way of Being Free”, p.69, Head of Zeus

  10 Copy quote

• The greatest religions convert the world through stories.

  Ben Okri

  Stories, World, Converting

  Ben Okri (2014). “A Way of Being Free”, p.61, Head of Zeus

  9 Copy quote

• 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, Police, World

  Ben Okri (2014). “A Way of Being Free”, p.6, Head of Zeus

  4 Copy quote

• In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.

  Ben Okri

  Rivers, World, Hungry

  "The Famished Road". Book by Ben Okri, March 14, 1991.

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Mad, Silence, Stories

  9 Copy quote

• A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.

  Ben Okri

  Men, Able, Sometimes

  "The Famished Road". Book by Ben Okri, 1991.

  4 Copy quote

• Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected.

  Ben Okri

  Dream, Destiny, Childhood

  Ben Okri (2014). “Astonishing the Gods”, Head of Zeus

  9 Copy quote

• The earliest storytellers were magi, seers, bards, griots, shamans. They were, it would seem, old as time, and as terrifying to gaze upon as the mysteries with which they wrestled .. (they) helped the community live though one more darkness, with eyes wide open, and with hearts set alight.

  Ben Okri

  Heart, Eye, Community

  4 Copy quote

• We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It's just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there. Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected.

  Ben Okri

  Dream, Fate, Destiny

  Ben Okri (2014). “Astonishing the Gods”, Head of Zeus

  30 Copy quote

Page 2 of 4

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin