Apart from a mark on my palm I had managed to avoid being discovered. It may simply have been that I had… — Ben Okri

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.

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.

"Learn to drink, my son. A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life."