Quote

This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.

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
Grows
Must
Life
Like
Puts
Wherever
Grow

More quotes by Ben Okri

Image
To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.
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
Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
Ben Okri
Image
Don't neglect the gold in your own back yard.
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
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
Image
I was born left-handed, but I was made to use my other hand. When I was writing 'Famished Road,' which was very long, I got repetitive stress syndrome. My right wrist collapsed, so I started using my left hand. The prose I wrote with my left hand came out denser, so later on I had to change it.
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
When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity's chief instrument.
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
There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
Ben Okri
Image
Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
Ben Okri
Image
The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.
Ben Okri
Image
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
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
A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.
Ben Okri
Image
The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.
Ben Okri
Image
To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.
Ben Okri
Image
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
Image
One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity. We had a bit of a rollercoaster life with some really challenging financial periods. He was always unshaken, completely tranquil, the same ebullient, laughing, jovial man.
Ben Okri