Ben Okri Quotes

Sometimes they say the world rotates a little different for lefthanders.

Each book is a separate entity for me. When I'm writing it, I enter its world and inhabit its vocabulary. I forget, as it were, that I ever wrote anything else.

The conventional wisdom with David Mamet is, you do not change a word. And that agrees with me. If you want to change any of David's words, it's like wanting to change the iambic pentameter in Shakespeare - you should do something else.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

It's a weird thing when you make records. You try to hear it before you make it, so you walk into the studio with this idea of what you expect to happen, and that usually changes. That usually turns into something else, and that's a good thing.

I might add that you change as a person as you grow older, so you change as a writer, too.

But usually I begin things through a drawing, so a lot of things are worked out in the drawing. But even then, I still allow for and want to make changes.

But when it came to jamming and writing songs like we used to, we realized Brandon was a huge spirit in the band. Who knew? It was just something we had to learn.

I try to write like the writers I admire - I rip them off in form. It comes from George Strait and Merle Haggard records, and country music in general is really good at that, the twisted phrase... So I'm always looking for that angle in my own work.

Writers generally get into writing because they want to write, not because they want to be independent publishers, and you can't really fault someone for saying, 'What I'm doing right now works, so there's no reason to change it.'

In my first film, we always tried to have a script and work in a normal way, but I was constantly changing things during shooting. Because I worked as a scriptwriter for 10 years, I understood that directors always wanted to change what was originally written, to improve on it.

As you get out and try to do things, you always find that in order to make an idea a reality, it goes through some changes. It doesn't always come out exactly like you envisioned it.

For me the writing, when I'm going to direct it myself, is really just the first draft, and I don't change it very much; I only change it on average about two lines per movie.

You know, I don't really do that much looking inside me when I'm working on a project. Whatever I am becomes what that film is. But I change; you change.

Every time I write a song my approach changes.

Those who write may think they know their target market. They may even feel they can shape the work to fit it. If this is true of you, you have more control over your creative process than I do. Even so, I humbly submit that you try letting your writing shape your target market instead and see what happens.

'Catch-22' was a nightmare to make, and everybody was unhappy except me.

I believed, after writing 'Mrs. Kimble,' that I knew how to write a novel. I quickly discovered that I only knew how to write that novel. 'Baker Towers' was a different beast entirely; and I felt as though I had to learn to write all over again.

A real idea keeps changing and appears in many places.

I've got a particular way of writing novels, and that carries over into the way I write comics and games, too. I'm a news journalist by background, so I approach everything as reporting - I treat it as real, I ask the questions I'd ask in a real situation, and I let the characters speak for themselves.

For me, emotion comes first. If I have to change a scene, invent a scene, change dialogue, or put Graff by the lake in order to feel that dynamic, and the end results feels like 'Ender's Game,' then hopefully it works.

I have always wondered why the movie industry was so firmly persuaded that the original author could be of no possible help in the case of a remake or any other change in a work.

I think we always move from imitation to assimilation to innovation, but I can't name you 20 people outside those we've already recognized who ever got to point three: innovation.

I'm a designer, and for me, things are always evolving, and such evolution is necessary.

I never thought I was writing for kids at all. It really shocked and unsettled me to hear kids were buying the books. If I'd known I was writing for kids, I might actually have spelt things out a bit more, and that would probably have killed the appeal.