159 Quotes by Ben Okri

I noticed that in a corner, across from where they ate with such innocent relish, sitting forlorn and abandoned, was the ghost of their son. He had lost both of his arms, one side of his face was squashed, and both his eyes had burst. He had bluish wings. He was the saddest ghost in the house.

Strange things are happening to us.’‘To our children.’‘They sayhe is looking for the spirit of Independence.’‘They say he is looking for himself.’‘For his ownspirit.’‘Which he lost when the white man came.

I don't think I can make people understand what my writing is about. That really belongs to time and the individual.

The greatest stories are those that resonate our beginnings and intuit our endings, our mysterious origins and our numinous destinies, and dissolve them both into one.

Our time here is magic! It's the only space you have to realize whatever it is that is beautiful, whatever is true, whatever is great, whatever is potential, whatever is rare, whatever is unique, in. It's the only space.

Home can be the friend you have been searching for all your life or the person you met once very briefly.

The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.

We never think that our mothers will die. It was like suddenly an abyss opened at my feet - I was standing on nothing. It was the strangest thing. Her passing away ripped the solidity out of the world.

I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.