# Quote — Ben Okri, The Famished Road

> "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.

- Author: [Ben Okri](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ben-okri.md)
- Book: [The Famished Road](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ben-okri/the-famished-road.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ben_Okri#The_Famished_Road_(1991)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ben-okri/the-famished-road/how-many-times

## More from this book

> 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.

p. 16 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ben-okri/the-famished-road/the-clearing-was.md)

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ben-okri/the-famished-road/one-human-life.md)

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

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ben-okri/the-famished-road/learn-to-drink.md)