# Ben Okri

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

## Quotes

* 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.

### The Famished Road (1991)

* 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)

* 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)

* 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)

* 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.

### Birds of Heaven (2010)

* 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)

* 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.

## External links

* The Famished Road
A Way of Being Free
Birds of Heaven