Ben Okri Quotes

We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.

Ben Okri

• Humanity

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Quotes to Explore

• I now announce myself as candidate for the Presidency. I anticipate criticism; but however unfavorable I trust that my sincerity will not be called into question.

  

  Victoria Woodhull
  • Question
  • Myself
  • Trust

• I am not sure that you, the younger generations, will like to go to war that we went through. So, we learn as the mistakes are being committed.

  

  Ibrahim Babangida
  • War
  • Mistakes
  • Generations

• I was mostly an indoor girl at university. Where other students did drama or music or sport alongside their degrees, I wrote. I used to work on essays and classwork during the day and 'The Bone Season' in the evenings.

  

  Samantha Shannon
  • Work
  • Music
  • Girl

• Strength is born in the deep silence of long-suffering hearts; not amid joy.

  

  Felicia Hemans
  • Long
  • Joy
  • Suffering

• People always ask me if I'm nervous about the intense sci-fi fans. To me that doesn't seem weird or scary. I get really intense about my favorite sci-fi shows, my favorite shows in general.

  

  Magda Apanowicz
  • People
  • Me
  • Weird

• My favorite big city would have to be Chicago. I lived in Indiana for several years and would always go into the city with my family for Cubs games or to visit the aquarium and museums on field trips.

  

  Karen Fairchild Little Big Town
  • Family
  • City
  • Chicago

• In a city, it's very hard to do a restaurant, an avant-garde-cuisine restaurant, where each year you need to change the whole menu.

  

  Ferran Adria
  • Change
  • City
  • Restaurant

• All I have to do to continue to make things work is make great records, and that's more important than having a crazy master plan.

  

  Jack Antonoff Fun.
  • Work
  • Great
  • Important

• The day I make movies that Rupert Murdoch likes and admires is the day I'll throw in the towel, because he's got no taste.

  

  Irwin Winkler
  • Day
  • Movies
  • Towel

• When I think about voting, I can skip it and still see myself as a good citizen. But when I think about being a voter, now the choice reflects on my character. It casts a shadow.

  

  Adam Grant
  • Good
  • Character
  • Myself

• Almost all of us growing up have played baseball on some level. It has an inside track with people. It has a unifying effect.

  

  Vin Scully
  • People
  • Up
  • Growing

• I sometimes feel nervous because I give stupid answers to certain pointless questions. It happens in Turkish as much as in English. I speak bad Turkish and utter stupid sentences.

  

  Orhan Pamuk
  • Bad
  • English
  • Stupid

• The insidious aid culture has left African countries more debt-laden, more inflation-prone, more vulnerable to the vagaries of the currency markets and more unattractive to higher-quality investment.

  

  Dambisa Moyo
  • Culture
  • Quality
  • Investment

• I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.

  

  Walt Whitman
  • Art
  • Past
  • Democracy

• Fate is written in the face.

  

  Federico Fellini
  • Fate
  • Face
  • Written

• Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed.

  

  Natalie Clifford Barney
  • Time
  • Tears
  • Faces

• Italy is full of historical buildings. And Europe holds a great history of philosophy from Greece until today. I read all those books and see these buildings, and I think of where I stand when I design my architecture.

  

  Tadao Ando
  • Great
  • History
  • Today

• I launched 'Lightspeed' magazine in 2010, and from day one, we've had a strict mission to try to have gender parity in the magazine because that was the first hurdle that science fiction and fantasy have been dealing with for a long time.

  

  John Joseph Adams
  • Time
  • Long
  • Science

• If of their pleasures and desires no end be found;God to their cares and fears will set no bound.What would content you? Who can tell?Ye fear so much to lose what you have gotAs if ye liked it well.Ye strive for more, as if ye liked it not.

  

  Abraham Cowley
  • God
  • Fear

• To lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things it would take off something from God's grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble.

  

  Leonardo da Vinci
  • God
  • Truth
  • Small

• Young man, two are the forces most precious to mankind. The first is Demeter, the Goddess. She is the Earth -- or any name you wish to call her -- and she sustains humanity with solid food. Next came Dionysus, the son of the virgin, bringing the counterpart to bread: wine and the blessings of life's flowing juices. His blood, the blood of the grape, lightens the burden of our mortal misery. Though himself a God, it is his blood we pour out to offer thanks to the Gods. And through him, we are blessed.

  

  Euripides
  • Humanity
  • Blessed
  • Gods

• A bit of perspective and life experience isn't a bad thing.

  

  Gail Honeyman
  • Life
  • Experience
  • Bad

• We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.

  

  Ben Okri
  • Humanity