Ben Okri

“To poison a nation, poison its stories. A demoralised nation tells demoralised stories to itself.”

“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.”

“Reading is an act of civilization; it’s one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the mind and builds castles of possibilities.”

“The law is simple. Every experience is a teacher. Every loss is a lesson. Every gain is a blessing.”

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

“When you can imagine you begin to create and when you begin to create you realize that you can create a world that you can live in.”

“Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals or nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.”

“The world in which we live is a masquerade.”

“A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.”

“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 you.”

“An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.”

“Perhaps true creativity is realizing that you don't have to be original, you just have to be authentic.”

“We have to find new lands, new ways of telling our stories.”

“The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, a dissatisfaction with the limits of human experience.”

“The higher the artist, the fewer the gestures.”

“When you can’t see, you are only able to see what you can imagine.”

“The worst realities are first imagined. The best realities are first imagined.”

“What we think is what we become.”