Ben Okri

Strange things are happening to us.___o our children.___hey sayhe is looking for the spirit of Independence.___hey say he is looking for himself.___or his ownspirit.___hich he lost when the white man came.

I noticed that in a corner, across from where they ate with such innocent relish, sitting forlorn and abandoned, was the ghost of their son. He had lost both of his arms, one side of his face was squashed, and both his eyes had burst. He had bluish wings. He was the saddest ghost in the house.

The highest kind of writing__hich must not be confused withthe most ambitious kind_belongs to the realm of grace. Talent ispart of it, certainly; a thorough understanding of the secret laws,absolutely. But finding the subject and theme which is in perfectharmony with your deepest nature, your forgotten selves, your hiddendreams, and the full unresonated essence of your life__ow thatcannot be reached through searching, nor can it be stumbled uponthrough ambition. That sort of serendipity comes upon you on alucky day. It may emerge even out of misfortune or defeat. You mayhappen upon it without realising that this is the work throughwhich your whole life will sing. We should always be ready. Weshould always be humble. Creativity should always be a form ofprayer.

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.

We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It's just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there. Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected.

Reading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn__ care to sit next to in a train, people that don__ exist, places you__e never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader__ creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive.

This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we__e born into stories. I say we__e also born from stories.

A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it__ moorings or orientation... Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.

Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.

Understanding is a pure glass of water. All great truths have no taste. Hints of sweetness are coloured by the need for amazement.