Ben Okri Quotes

So much of listening to lyrically driven music is projecting your own feelings and experiences into the music.

Reading, like writing, is a creative act. If readers only bring a narrow range of themselves to the book, then they'll only see their narrow range reflected in it.

Nothing frustrates me more than someone who reads something of mine or anyone else's and says, angrily, 'I don't buy it.' Why are they angry? Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head—even if in the end you conclude that someone else's head is not a place you'd really like to be.

I think writers like to see how people bring their words to life, and it's always surprising. Always, no matter what, whether it's good or bad, it's always surprising because a whole human being is coming to that piece of writing.

With most of the songs and music that I've composed, irrespective of the myriad videos made, I was always careful not to overly define the experience, leaving room for people to internalize things for themselves, making their experience more integral.

The best song is what resonates with that one person the most. It's why, if you ask a million people on the face of the Earth, they're all gonna have different favorite songs, their own best song ever, because that's the one that touched them the most.

I think film should raise questions, not give answers. I think film should challenge people to reflect, debate and get by themselves to the answer that fits them.

Being unbiased is a lot like being humble: as soon as you think you are, you aren’t. Neither are a finite state of being but a continuous struggle to not allow our perspectives poison our opinions.

When I read, I don't need a character to look like me, act like me, or think like me. I don't need to have my heart broken. I don't need to be surprised or amused or challenged, and I don't need to swoon.

Art is supposed to hold up a mirror to its audience and ask, 'What do you believe? What do you think? What do you feel?' and if you look at a painting and it makes you feel nothing, that's a feeling as well.

I have an increasingly strong feeling that all of us, myself included, too many times make too many statements and don't ask enough questions.

Reminding myself that listening is just as important a creative act as thinking is key for me.

Traveling through the world produces a marvelous clarity in the judgment of men. We are all of us confined and enclosed within ourselves, and see no farther than the end of our nose. This great world is a mirror where we must see ourselves in order to know ourselves. There are so many different tempers, so many different points of view, judgments, opinions, laws and customs to teach us to judge wisely on our own, and to teach our judgment to recognize its imperfection and natural weakness.

I think two different people can read one of my books and come away with completely different opinions on the subject. I hope they just read from the beginning to the end and be made to think about the subject. Then they can come to their own conclusions.

You can't tell people how to feel when they read your work. You can only hope to connect.

Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.

I don't know why people see the things that they do. I wouldn't pay to see them, they don't touch me or move me in any way.

I never try to guess what anyone else will take from a movie. Every movie is such a different experience for each and every person. I don't like it when people try telling people what they should take from a movie. You should go see it with fresh eyes and see for themselves.

I am sure everyone has had the experience of reading a book and finding it vibrating with aliveness, with colour and immediacy. And then, perhaps some weeks later, reading it again and finding it flat and empty. Well, the book hasn't changed: you have.

No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books.

I'm not presumptuous enough to feel that people are going to feel what I have in mind, so I tell a story, you know, let them read something, that doesn't change, that as I have said it, you know, so that's the way I feel about the viewer, the viewer has a mind of their own and eyes of their own and they're going to see it their way, I just hope they look.

The residuum of another's expression can never be related to one's own feeling.

Think before you speak. Think before you judge. Think before you think you have a person all figured out.

People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of a person.

Anything I've not experienced I do not look to for a subject. I have to feel it.