Ben Okri Quotes

I've been homeless on a few occasions.

I'd been living on the streets of New York, and I was sleeping at my friends' houses, sometimes in the subway.

I think it is really sad that when people lose their homes they kind of lose their minds too.

I was living in my van, playing on the street for almost two years.

When I was living in New York and didn't have a penny to my name, I would walk around the streets and occasionally I would see an alcove or something. And I'd think, that'll be good, that'll be a good spot for me when I'm homeless.

I was planning on my future as a homeless person. I had a really good spot picked out.

Eventually I did that, but it took a lot of twists and turns, and there were a year or two there where I was living with no money at all - no home, no car, no nothing. I was living in somebody's garage in Los Angeles at that point - for a year.

I lost an apartment. l became homeless for 11 months and squatted in a building on Sullivan Street in lower Manhattan.

I lived in the streets for three years when I was a kid, and every day, I didn't know where my next meal would come from.

I lived on the street myself.

I still have the mentality of someone who doesn't know where he's going to sleep and doesn't know if he has enough money for gas to get to the next job interview. I don't think that mentality ever leaves, you know?

Nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street.

I used to walk to the Washington Monument from North L Street Northwest. And I was so hungry at times, I would stop and look into the trash cans, and if there was a half a sandwich, I would take that sandwich and eat it. It was just a matter of survival. I didn't think much of it, but it was just the way things were.

I came back to the hood and got in those streets and started doing whatever it took for me to provide.

When I got to New York, I had no place to sleep. The pay from 'Sesame Street' wasn't enough to rent an apartment. I was staying on people's couches. I stayed in the dressing room until they found out. I stayed with Jim Henson and his family for a week, and I wanted to do that permanently. I didn't dare ask, though.

Homelessness is an issue close to my heart.

The rocky time came right after I left school. I spent a lot of time at night navigating the streets of Paris trying to find something to eat.

There are men and women still on the streets, and that's all they are saying Can you spare a quarter? I come from a crowd of people who were current on the outlook on life, who were social and knew where they were and had some input into how things seemed to be.

I used to sit in front of McDonald's and ask people for dollars to get me a cheeseburger. It was bad.

A lot of people don't know what it's like to actually be hungry. I do. I've also slept on the streets.

The first time I was homeless was when I went to Atlanta. I was in a homeless shelter, then when I got a job I used to miss the curfew for the shelter. So I ended up sleeping outside in the streets.

I moved around 13 different times before I was in fifth grade, not having money, not having a lot of friends.

The first eight years of my life, we lived in an abandoned diner - we were basically squatters.

A subject to which few intellectuals ever give a thought is the right to be a vagrant, the freedom to wander.

There are just way too many people suffering out there.