Ben Okri

Quiet people are the most dangerous.

Our society is a battlefield. Poverty, corruption and hunger are the bullets. Bad governments are the bombs.

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.

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.

"A writer's task is not merely to describe the world but to deepen our way of seeing it."

For your reflections reflect on the things you do. And the things you do reflect on you.

"Writing is a way of paying attention to life."

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?

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.

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.

"We have no instrument by which to record the absolute nature of reality, because whatever instrument we use is filtered through consciousness."