# Quote — Ben Okri, The Famished Road

> "In that land of beginnings spirits mingled with the unborn. We could assume numerous forms. Many of us were birds. We knew no boundaries. There was much feasting, playing, and sorrowing. We feasted much because of the beautiful terrors of eternity. We played much because we were free. And we sorrowed much because there were always those amongst us who had just returned from the world of the Living. They had returned inconsolable for all the love they had left behind, all the suffering they hadn’t redeemed, all that they hadn’t understood, and for all that they had barely begun to learn before they were drawn back to the land of origins."

- 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/in-that-land

## 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)