Ben Okri
Sir Ben Golden Emuobowho Okri OBE FRSL (born 15 March 1959) is a Nigerian poet and novelist.
Quotes
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- I imagine a reader who, like me, is a bit exasperated with the accumulation of the follies of our times, someone ready for a new way of looking, thinking and being; someone who combines youth and experience, idealism and realism. Someone who isn’t afraid to dream but also is not afraid to roll up their sleeves and participate in the tough magic of life.
- It is easy to forget how mysterious and mighty stories are. They do their work in silence, invisibly. They work with all the internal materials of the mind and self. They become part of you while changing you. Beware the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.
- “I am addicted to dialogues... on the necessity to preserve the vitality and energy of dialogues in the third millennium which is “a time of monologues, soliloquies, solipsistic speech in twittersphere... a time in which we talk from our solitudes.”
- The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering
- I’d like to have another crack at being me. I now know how I can be me better and faster, with grander results.
- I am always pursuing new ways of telling a story because a story is not a beginning, middle and end, a story is much more than that. A story is like an interval in the enchantment of living.
- 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,
- The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing,” he had said. Perhaps, unwittingly, he deployed this tactics to pull the carpet off the feet of politicians and in general, the ruling class that have been severely attacked in most of his writings.
- We don’t have much time. The climate crisis has done something to time. We have a short time gap to turn things around and get the environment back on an even keel.
- A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation... Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.
- Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
- The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love, and to be greater than our suffering.
- Don't neglect the gold in your own back yard.
- “Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment. Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery. Even if you lose, or are defeated by things, your triumph will always be exemplary. And if no one knows it, then there are places that do. People like you enrich the dreams of the worlds, and it is dreams that create history. People like you are unknowing transformers of things, protected by your own fairy-tale, by love.”
- “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.”
- “Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.”
- “Don't read what everyone else is reading. Check them out later, cautiously.”
- “There is a kind of expressed love which is easy to subvert. When a figure is loved for their deeds, their conquests, their heroism, their goodness, their love of the people, these are easy enough to destroy... But there is a kind of love which is felt for apparently no reason... A love, inspired, it seems, by the gods, which it is impossible to fight, distort, destroy, or weaken. In fact, the attempts to destroy such loves only strengthen them. And to do nothing allows them to continue to grow at their natural pace, inexoribly, till this love becomes a wide and silent adoration.”
- The demands are purely personal. I offered them to the public only to share where my thoughts and convictions have taken me. If we understand what is happening to the planet, and therefore to us, and if we love this earth and our life on it, then we simply would not be doing most of what we do. There is too much waste.
- That's the way it is. If you believe in something your very belief renders you unqualified to do it. Your earnestness will come across. Your passion will show. Your enthusiasm will make everyone nervous. And your naivety will irritate. Which means that you will become suspect. Which means you will be prone to disillusionment. Which means that you will not be able to sustain your belief in the face of all the piranha fish which nibble away at your idea and your faith, 'till only the skeleton of your dream is left. Which means that you have to become a fanatic, a fool, a joke, an embarrassment. The world - which is to say the powers that be - would listen to your ardent ideas with a stiff smile on its face, then put up impossible obstacles, watch you finally give up your cherished idea, having mangled it beyond recognition, and after you slope away in profound discouragement it will take up your idea, dust it down, give it a new spin, and hand it over to someone who doesn't believe in it at all.
The Famished Road (1991)
[edit]- 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.
- Book 1, pg. 3
- "In that land of beginnings spirits mingled with the unborn. We could assume numerous forms. Many of us were birds. We knew no boundaries. There was much feasting, playing, and sorrowing. We feasted much because of the beautiful terrors of eternity. We played much because we were free. And we sorrowed much because there were always those amongst us who had just returned from the world of the Living. They had returned inconsolable for all the love they had left behind, all the suffering they hadn’t redeemed, all that they hadn’t understood, and for all that they had barely begun to learn before they were drawn back to the land of origins."
- Book 1, pg. 3
- Azaro feels connected to the spirit world, but he chooses to live in the physical world because it brings joy to his mother. He also feels sad for women who lose their spirit children.
- "You are a mischievous one. You will cause no end of trouble. You have to travel many roads before you find the river of your destiny. This life of yours will be full of riddles. You will be protected and you will never be alone."
- Book 1, pg. 6
- "How many times had I come and gone through the dreaded gateway? How many times had I been born and died young? And how often to the same parents? I had no idea. So much of the dust of living was in me. But this time, somewhere in the interspace between the spirit world and the Living, I chose to stay.
- Book 1, pg. 8
- Azaro's decision to remain in the physical world.
- "Learn to drink, my son. A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life."
- Book 1, pg. 35.
- Rather than dealing with mental and emotional strain, Azaro's father, Black Tyger sometimes prefers to burn those feelings and ideas away with alcohol.
- "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."
- Book 1, pgs. 46-47.
- "When I woke up I found myself in a coffin. My parents had given me up for dead. They had commenced the burial proceedings when they heard my fierce weeping. Because of my miraculous recovery they named me a second time and threw a party which they couldn’t afford.They named me Lazaro. But as I became the subject of much jest, and as many were uneasy with the connection between Lazaro and Lazarus, Mum shortened my name to Azaro."
- Book 1, pg. 40
- Azaro on how he got his name.
- 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.
- This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
- A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.
- 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
- Before everything was born there was first the spirit. It is the spirit which invites things in, good things, or bad. Invite only good things, my son. Listen to the spirit of things. To your own spirit. Follow it. Master it. So long as we are alive, so long as we feel, so long as we love, everything in us is an energy we can use. There is a stillness which makes you travel faster. There is a silence which makes you fly. If your heart is a friend of Time nothing can destroy you.
- Many people reside in us. Many past lives, many future lives. If you listen carefully the air is full of laughter. Human beings are a great mystery.
- There will be changes. Coups. Soldiers everywhere. Ugliness. Blindness. And then when people least expect it a great transformation is going to take place in the world. Suffering people will know justice and beauty. A wonderful change is coming from far away and people will realise the great meaning of struggle and hope. There will be peace.
- 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.
- Section 1, Book 1, Chapters 1, Page 3
- 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.
- Section 1, Book 1, Chapters 1, Page 5
- The clearing was the beginning of an expressway. Building companies had levelled the trees. In places the earth was red. We passed a tree that had been felled. Red liquid dripped from its stump as if the tree had been a murdered giant whose blood wouldn’t stop flowing.
- Section 1, Book 1, Chapters 4, Page 16
Astonishing the Gods (1995)
[edit]- The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.
- I love your loneliness. It is brave. It makes the universe want to protect you.
- When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.
- I kept looking forward the answer to things. I kept looking, and I never saw, and I became lost. I lost myself, lost my own reality.
Dangerous Love (1996)
[edit]- Bad things will happen and good things too. Your life will be full of surprises. Miracles happen only where there has been suffering. So taste your grief to the fullest. Don’t try and press it down. Don’t hide from it. Don’t escape. It is life too. It is truth. But it will pass and time will put a strange honey in the bitterness. That’s the way life goes.
- So long as a canvas is empty its potential is infinite… The empty canvas can become a gateway into the landscape of nightmares or a vision of sensual bliss.
- If your work can surprise you then you have started something worthwhile.
- Book 1
- For your reflections reflect on the things you do. And the things you do reflect on you.
- Book 3
- Quiet people are the most dangerous.
- Book 4
- Craft is important. The greater the idea, the greater the craft you need.
- Our society is a battlefield. Poverty, corruption and hunger are the bullets. Bad governments are the bombs.
- Be like the tortoise- grow a hard shell to protect your strong heart. Be like the eagle- soar above your pain and carry the banner and the wonder of our lives to the farthest corners of the world. Build your strength. Destiny is difficult.
- Responsibility is active. Vigilant. Actions become character and character becomes destiny. . .the moment you see something is wrong, you have a responsibility.
A Way of Being Free (1998)
[edit]- What hope is there for individual reality or authenticity when the forces of violence and orthodoxy, the earthly powers of guns and bombs and manipulated public opinion make it impossible for us to be authentic and fulfilled human beings? The only hope is in the creation of alternative values, alternative realities. The only hope is in daring to redream one's place in the world - a beautiful act of imagination, and a sustained act of self becoming. Which is to say that in some way or another we breach and confound the accepted frontiers of things.
- Reading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn’t care to sit next to in a train, people that don’t exist, places you’ve never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader’s creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive.
After the End
[edit]- After a while I came to accept the curse of life. Every day was an entombment. Every day the dream of light faded from our spirits.
- My dreams would be of nothing but sunlight. Sometimes I dreamt of fields of green. The green in my dreams was unnaturally alive. It made me weep to think of such a green. Sometimes I dreamt of rivers and streams, of running water. There was nothing as magical as the sun on my face in those dreams, or the feeling of water splashed on my body.
- When we tried to re-create the world, we found that we could only re-create what we had known. We realized quickly that we were reconstructing our narrowness and our limitations. It was less than what we knew before. Therefore, we could not really begin again. And so we had to begin from nothing.
- As can be seen, we carried our past with us into the dark. At first, for a long time, that past held. People clung onto what they had been before as they would to a life raft. People talked about their homes and where they grew up with a nostalgia laced with tears.
- In the beginning it did not seem like being in the dark was going to be our fate. We thought we would be there for a short time and would soon get a sign telling us that it was all clear in the world above and that we could return. But the sign never came.
- The old ways must die with the old world. To begin anew, we must really begin anew.
- The world outside the tunnel had been nothing but a rumor to me all my life. I had listened to the older ones who remembered something of what it was like, and I had learned one thing from them: never to follow the route they had taken. They talked with affection about gardening, about driving, about large parties, about schools, universities, careers, money, success, music festivals, falling in love.
Birds of Heaven (2010)
[edit]- If we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom.
- To see the madness and yet walk a perfect silver line. ... That's what the true story-teller should be: a great guide, a clear mind, who can walk a silver line in hell or madness.
- Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories.
The Age of Magic (2014)
[edit]- What if by sheer repetition we become the person we most often pretend to be? Does that mean there is no authentic self? Are we made of habits, compressed by time, like layered rocks?
- Maybe true travel is not the transportation of the body, but a change of perception, renewing the mind.
- Inverse of the word live is evil.
- "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."
- "We have no instrument by which to record the absolute nature of reality, because whatever instrument we use is filtered through consciousness."
- "When I was about three years old... I realised that words could move the power in a room."
- "Writing is a way of paying attention to life."
- "A writer's task is not merely to describe the world but to deepen our way of seeing it."
- The Famished Road is essentially a novel about the spirit child, Azaro (the main character of the novel). In Nigerian, a spirit child is known as Abiku. This is a child that keeps on being born, dying, and born again. So it is a cyclical child, that does not like reality/existence. The child does not like reality because it sees reality as being very difficult, filled with suffering and pain. Abiku comes from the world of spirit, which is a land of light, joy, rainbow, possibilities, and freedom. A place of eternities, silence, and music. Therefore, if they have this other land why would spirit children want to come into reality to suffer pain, bereavement, and mourning. They do not like this world. However, Azaro is a unique kind of hero because in having a choice between eternity and mortality, he chooses mortality. So here is a child that could live a more beautiful existence but chose this difficult one. Azaro not only choose to live but to be born into a poor family that experiences a great deal of suffering! The hardest possible life.
