Ben Okri Quotes

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

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

When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity's chief instrument. - Ben Okri

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

We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings. - Ben Okri

To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something. - Ben Okri

To poison a nation, poison its stories. A demoralised nation tells demoralised stories to itself. Beware of the storytellers who are not fully conscious of the importance of their gifts, and who are irresponsible in the application of their art: they. - Ben Okri

To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home. - Ben Okri

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

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