Quote

One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.

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
Gifts
Adversity
Gave
Jovial
Courage
Unintentionally
Greatest
Witnessing
Father
Tranquil
Bore
Bores

More quotes by Ben Okri

Image
When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.
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
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 of spirit. The characters of Turgenev are ghetto dwellers. Dickens characters are Nigerians.
Ben Okri
Image
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
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
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
Image
This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
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
The road will never swallow you. The river of destiny will always overcome evil. May you understand your fate. Suffering will never destroy you, but will make you stronger. Success will never confuse you of scatter your spirit, but will make you fly higher into the good sunlight. Your life will always surprise you.
Ben Okri
Image
Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
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
The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.
Ben Okri
Image
One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits. The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us.
Ben Okri
Image
I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
Ben Okri
Image
Beware of the stories you read or tell subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.
Ben Okri
Image
We can still astonish the gods in humanity And be the stuff of future legends, If we but dare to be real, And have the courage to see That this is the time to dream The best dream of them all.
Ben Okri
Image
There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
Ben Okri
Image
When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity's chief instrument.
Ben Okri
Image
Creativity is the art of the impossible
Ben Okri