Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.
BEN OKRITo see the madness and yet walk a perfect silver line. … That’s what the true story-teller should be: a great guide, a clear mind, who can walk a silver line in hell or madness.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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I learned that life will go through changes – up and down and up again. It’s what life does.
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Creativity is the art of the impossible
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The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.
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Reading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn’t care to sit next to in a train.
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Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories
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I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends’ floors, was happy, was miserable.
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I’m fascinated by the mysterious element that runs through our lives. Everyone is looking out of the world through their emotion and history. Nobody has an absolute reality.
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An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.
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We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.
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Don’t despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.
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If you are working in an office, where do you find the time to write a novel? But you can finish a short story in five pages. Furthermore, a short story is a perfect place to learn the craft
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What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.
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What hope is there for individual reality or authenticity when the forces of violence and orthodoxy, the earthly powers of guns and bombs and manipulated public opinion make it impossible for us to be authentic and fulfilled human beings?
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We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It’s just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there.
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Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment.
BEN OKRI