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Ben Okri Quotes

born 1959 Nigeria

Sir Ben Golden Emuobowho Okri OBE FRSL (born 15 March 1959) is a Nigerian poet and novelist.

Nigeria
Essayists
Novelists
Poets
Short story writers

Also known as: Astonishing the Gods, Dangerous Love (novel), The Age of Magic, The Famished Road

Random Ben Okri quote

43 quotes

If your work can surprise you then you have started something worthwhile.

Dangerous Love (1996)

"Learn to drink, my son. A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life."

The Famished Road (1991)

"Writing is a way of paying attention to life."

The Age of Magic (2014)

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.

The Famished Road (1991)

For your reflections reflect on the things you do. And the things you do reflect on you.

Dangerous Love (1996)

"A writer's task is not merely to describe the world but to deepen our way of seeing it."

The Age of Magic (2014)

"We have no instrument by which to record the absolute nature of reality, because whatever instrument we use is filtered through consciousness."

The Age of Magic (2014)

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

The Famished Road (1991)

Quiet people are the most dangerous.

Dangerous Love (1996)

I’d like to have another crack at being me. I now know how I can be me better and faster, with grander results.

Maybe true travel is not the transportation of the body, but a change of perception, renewing the mind.

The Age of Magic (2014)

If we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom.

Birds of Heaven (2010)

Apart from a mark on my palm I had managed to avoid being discovered. It may simply have been that I had grown tired of coming and going. It is terrible to forever remain in-between.

The Famished Road (1991)

“Don't read what everyone else is reading. Check them out later, cautiously.”

“Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.”

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

Astonishing the Gods (1995)

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

Astonishing the Gods (1995)

Don't neglect the gold in your own back yard.

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

The Famished Road (1991)

"Maybe one of the worst things that we can do is to diminish the possibility of the universe in our insistence on our description of it."

The Age of Magic (2014)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Ben Okri (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.