“The best writing is not about the writer, the best writing is absolute...” — Ben Okri Quote

The best writing is not about the writer, the best writing is absolutely not about the writer, it's about us, it's about the reader.

One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.

Politics is the art of the possible; creativity is the art of the impossible.

I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.

I became a sceptic of one way of seeing the world. And I think it is what started me in my awareness that any worldview is superstitious.

Part of me really wants to believe that hope is entirely available to all of us. We don't have to embrace it. It would be sentimental and silly to say that we all need it, but it is absolutely available to all of us.

I absolutely love sweet potatoes baked in their skins.

Scottish politics, U.K. politics, is not really like American politics in this respect. Not everybody is absolutely obsessed with image. I'm not saying the United States is obsessed with image.

I remember when I was about 12, I read M. R. James' 'Ghost Stories Of An Antiquary' under the covers, way too young to fully understand what was going on with those stories - completely terrified but absolutely loved them.