Ben Okri
Ben Okri
Ben Okri OBE FRSLis a Nigerian poet and novelist. Okri is considered one of the foremost African authors in the post-modern and post-colonial traditions and has been compared favourably to authors such as Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez...
NationalityNigerian
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth15 March 1959
CountryNigeria
definitions destination
We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
art humanity three
There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
art poison stories
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
grows
This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
belief situation
To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.
dream fate destiny
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.
real soul weight
It may be that what you could be haunts you. It is real. It is a weight you have to carry around. Each failure to become, to be, is a weight. Each state you could inhabit is a burden as heavy as any physical weight, but more so, because it weighs on your soul. It is the ghost of your possibilities hanging around your neck, an invisible albatros, potentials unknowingly murdered.
mad silence stories
Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories
dream mean reality
The worst realities of our age are manufactured realities. It is therefore our task, as creative participants in the universe, to re dream our world. The fact of possessing imagination means that everything can be re dreamed. Each reality can have it
art magic
Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
art creativity impossible
Creativity is the art of the impossible
rivers world hungry
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.
dream destiny childhood
Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected.
dream real world
We can redream this world and make the dream come real. Human beings are gods hidden from themselves.