Ben Okri Quotes

I showed you that it is unreality that makes the world real. ‘
‘I don’t understand’
‘You take every day for granted. That for you is real.
But if you stop taking it for granted it becomes unreal. Unreality makes the world real. If you remember how unreal the world is, you will be fine

It was a night replaying its corrosive recurrence on the road of our lives, on the road which was hungry for great transformations.

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.

So books should be lived to be read.
And life should be dreamt to be lived.

Centuries of being attached to the machine had atrophied the languages of the earth.

A week later another woman did the same thing. She stripped naked and ran through the streets singing. But that day changed the history of the world. For the police chased after the woman, caught up with her and, in full public view, ate her raw. They tore her flesh and drank her blood and ate chunks of her buttocks and gorged themselves on her bones.

After that a new madness came among the people.

At night, in a restless neighborhood, someone might be heard screaming. Those who looked out of the window saw a white van appear outside the house. An hour later men in uniformed would be seen emerging from the house with blood on their faces and blood and gristle on their shirts as if they had been feasting on raw wild animals. The next day nothing but the cracked skull and long bones of the victim were seen in the bedroom.

A new stage in the elimination of undesirables had been reached.

There was a long silence as we swam around in the strange currents of Dad's words.

I also knew that because he was safely on the right side, the strongest side, he would never understand what it was like to live with seven corpses in your dreams, to live with women eaten by ringworm, or children bursting with stomach worms.

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

Reading, like writing, is a creative act. If readers only bring a narrow range of themselves to the book, then they'll only see their narrow range reflected in it.

His mind had been unhinged by the blast of detonators, nights spent with corpses and by the superstitious incredulity of having killed so many white men.

The only power that black people have is their hunger.

Don't fear. You will always have something to struggle for, even if it is beauty or joy.

"No one in the house had seen books for generations. We didn't even know what they were. We'd only heard that they were poisonous and that they ruined the mind, and that no one was to have anything to do with them.".

She moved in cadenzas of golden light. She floated on the wind of a royal serenity.