Michaelo El Grando

“We must look at ourselves differently. We are freer than we think. We haven't begun to live yet. The man whose light has come on in his head, in his dormant sun, can never be kept down or defeated. We can redream this world and make the dream real. Human beings are gods hidden from ourselves.”
― Ben Okri, The Famished Road

“What if by sheer repetition we become the person we most often pretend to be? Does that mean there is no authentic self? Are we made of habits, compressed by time, like layered rocks?”
― Ben Okri, The Age of Magic

“The spirit of deception, you see,” Father Maximos explained, “has egotism and pride as its primary attribute.”
― Kyriacos C. Markides, The Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality

“He saw the world in which black people always suffered and he didn’t like it. He saw a world in which human beings suffered so needlessly from Antipodes to Equator, and he didn’t like it either. He saw our people drowning in poverty, in famine, drought, in divisiveness and the blood of war. He saw our people always preyed upon by other powers, manipulated by the Western world, our history and achievements rigged out of existence.”
― Ben Okri, The Famished Road