Ben Okri

"When I was about three years old... I realised that words could move the power in a room."

If your work can surprise you then you have started something worthwhile.

Responsibility is active. Vigilant. Actions become character and character becomes destiny. . .the moment you see something is wrong, you have a responsibility.

Bad things will happen and good things too. Your life will be full of surprises. Miracles happen only where there has been suffering. So taste your grief to the fullest. Don’t try and press it down. Don’t hide from it. Don’t escape. It is life too. It is truth. But it will pass and time will put a strange honey in the bitterness. That’s the way life goes.

Craft is important. The greater the idea, the greater the craft you need.

"Maybe one of the worst things that we can do is to diminish the possibility of the universe in our insistence on our description of it."

I love your loneliness. It is brave. It makes the universe want to protect you.

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.

I kept looking forward the answer to things. I kept looking, and I never saw, and I became lost. I lost myself, lost my own reality.

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."

Many people reside in us. Many past lives, many future lives. If you listen carefully the air is full of laughter. Human beings are a great mystery.