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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ben Okri
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: March 15
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Book
Reflected
Writing
Narrow
Like
Readers
Range
Reader
Bring
Creative
Reading

More quotes by Ben Okri

Image
A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.
Ben Okri
Image
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
Image
Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
Ben Okri
Image
One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
Ben Okri
Image
I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.
Ben Okri
Image
We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
Ben Okri
Image
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
Image
A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation... Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.
Ben Okri
Image
I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry.
Ben Okri
Image
There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
Ben Okri
Image
I am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people.
Ben Okri
Image
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.
Ben Okri
Image
People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
Ben Okri
Image
I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
Ben Okri
Image
This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
Ben Okri
Image
I know that human beings are capable of anything.
Ben Okri
Image
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
Image
When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.
Ben Okri
Image
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.
Ben Okri
Image
When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity's chief instrument.
Ben Okri