159 Quotes by Ben Okri

The earliest storytellers were magi, seers, bards, griots, shamans. They were, it would seem, old as time, and as terrifying to gaze upon as the mysteries with which they wrestled .. (they) helped the community live though one more darkness, with eyes wide open, and with hearts set alight.

An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.

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

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.

We disliked the rigours of existence, the unfulfilled longings, the enshrined injustices of the world, the labyrinths of love, the ignorance of parents, the fact of dying, and the amazing indifference of the Living in the midst of the simple beauties of the universe. We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see.

a dream can be the highest point of a life

We can redream this world and make the dream come real. Human beings are gods hidden from themselves.

Creativity is the art of the impossible

Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories