Ben Okri Quotes

If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.

I think performance art comes from a simple place of wanting to express things beyond just sound.

I'm 38 years old and Limp Bizkit is just something I do. If I was a painter, it would just be a type of painting I make.

Language is much closer to film than painting is.

Artists need to express.

That's what I like about film-it can be bizarre, classic, normal, romantic. Cinema is to me the most versatile thing.

True creativity often starts where language ends.

I try and make little stories. Whether it's with a pencil or with bits of records, it's really the same thing.

I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.

Drawing is a way of coming upon the connection between things, just like metaphor in poetry reconnects what has become separated.

A picture is a poem without words.

Painting is a language of its own. You cannot interpret one form of expression with another form of expression.

From the age of six I wanted to be an artist. At that point I meant a painter, but it turned out what I really meant was I was someone who was very interested in watching the world and making copies of it.

Dancers are a work of art - they are the canvas on which their work is painted.

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

Color is a passion; painting is a passion.

While drawing, I discover what I really want to say.

Photography is about finding things. And painting is different - it's about making something.

As far as I am concerned, taking photographs is a means of understanding which cannot be separated from other means of visual expression. It is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one's own originality. It is a way of life.

This industry [photography], by invading the territories of art, has become art's most mortal enemy.

I think that painting is a very ancient form of expression.

The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.

Painting is the intermediate somewhat between a thought and a thing.

I don't believe that you can possibly separate expression from thought in an imaginative work. The better a thing is expressed, the more completely it is thought.

Acting is just another way to express myself as an artist. I realized if you're an artist, you're an artist and you can express that through music, through painting, through photography, through acting - this is just another way for me to express myself.