A biography for Ben Okrihasn’t been written yet.
“Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.”
“The poem is never complete in the mind. It emerges, and then it's like an act of unveiling. The unveiling is the longest and most difficult part of it.”
“Understanding is a pure glass of water. All great truths have no taste. Hints of sweetness are coloured by the need for amazement.”
“The higher the artist, the fewer the gestures. The fewer the tools, the greater the imagination. The greater the will, the greater the secret failure.”
“I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.”
“The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.”
“Politics is the art of the possible; creativity is the art of the impossible.”
“The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.”
“The worst time was 1983. Love and life and everything went wrong. I reached absolute rock bottom. I saw the Minotaur at the bottom of the abyss. I learnt of the harshness of the world and its impartiality to human failure.”
“I began my writing life as a poet, so poetry has always been fundamental. I evolved from poetry to journalism to stories to novels. But poetry was always there.”
“Fire is one of my temperaments. It is behind all my work... Fire is a chemical presence.”
“The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.”
“When I write a poem, I go into a state of self-forgetfulness, and something higher takes over; I like to call it my best self.”
“'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' had a formative effect on me. I think it's one of those works that if you encounter it very early you're doubly enchanted by the beauty of the language and the strangeness of the vision. It stays with you.”
“He thought about how the camera makes one fall in love with an image of oneself, and perpetuates a false reality.”
“I am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people.”
“Reading is an act of civilization; it's one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the mind and builds castles of possibilities.”
“You see, I was told stories, we were all told stories as kids in Nigeria. We had to tell stories that would keep one another interested, and you weren't allowed to tell stories that everybody else knew. You had to dream up new ones.”
“You cannot come to a Nigerian restaurant without having pepper soup.”
“I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry.”