Life & Wisdom Quote by Ben Okri

Story begins where paradise breaks. Ben Okri’s line needles the sentimental idea that storytelling is merely entertainment or decoration; he frames it as evidence of a species that can’t quite settle into the world as it is. “Unease” is the engine. If humans were seamless and satisfied, narrative would be unnecessary because narrative is, at root, a record of friction: a want, a wound, a mismatch between desire and reality. Okri compresses an entire theory of art into a blunt conditional: perfection cancels plot.

The subtext is quietly accusatory. We tell stories not because life is abundant, but because it’s insufficient. That “hint” repeated twice matters: Okri isn’t diagnosing with clinical certainty so much as pointing to a tell, like a poet reading the body language of civilization. Storytelling becomes a symptom and a strategy at once: proof of our flaws, and the tool we use to metabolize them.

Context sharpens the intent. Okri, a Nigerian poet and novelist shaped by postcolonial history and spiritual realism, writes from landscapes where official narratives often fail to hold the full truth of lived experience. In that light, “imperfection” isn’t just personal angst; it’s historical rupture, social inequality, the unfinished business of identity. Stories fill the gaps left by politics, by trauma, by silence.

The craft of the quote is its paradoxical comfort: it reframes brokenness as generative. Okri isn’t romanticizing suffering; he’s explaining why art persists. We narrate because we are incomplete, and that incompleteness keeps the imagination employed.