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The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.

Ben Okri

The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us.
BEN OKRI

Birds Fish Inside Magic Strange
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.
BEN OKRI

Character Creativity Reading
Our time here is magic! It’s the only space you have to realize whatever it is that is beautiful, whatever is true, whatever is great, whatever is potential, whatever is rare, whatever is unique, in. It’s the only space.
BEN OKRI

Beautiful Space Unique
If we are true, if we can love, if we have vision, if we can have courage, we can, we should, we ought to, we will.
BEN OKRI

Power Should Vision
This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
BEN OKRI

Down Grows Like
Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
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Around Destiny Expected Riddle Way
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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Beautiful Despair Secret
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.
BEN OKRI

Absolutely Reader Writing
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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Office Perfect Writing
There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
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Art Humanity Three
We are living in enchanted time. With our spirits right.
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Enchanted Spirit Time
What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.
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Create Eventually Make People
Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment.
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Dream Flower Strong
We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
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Definitions Destination Require Stop
A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation… Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.
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Heart Mad People
To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.
BEN OKRI

Anyone Home Homeless

The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.

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The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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