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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

I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends’ floors, was happy, was miserable.
BEN OKRI

Homeless Miserable Wit
I was told stories, we were all told stories as kids in Nigeria. We had to tell stories that would keep one another interested, and you weren’t allowed to tell stories that everybody else knew. You had to dream up new ones.
BEN OKRI

Children Dream Kids
I am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people.
BEN OKRI

Fighting People Share
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.
BEN OKRI

Destiny Dream Fate
Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
BEN OKRI

Enemy Expression Silence
Ghetto-dwellers are the great fantasists. There was an extraordinary vibrancy there, an imaginative life. When you are that poor, all you’ve got left is your belief in the imagination.
BEN OKRI

Ghetto Imagination Vibrancy
A man’s greatest battles are the ones he fights within himself.
BEN OKRI

Battle Fighting Men
People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
BEN OKRI

Healthy People Stories
I know that human beings are capable of anything.
BEN OKRI

Capable Humans Knows
I learned that life will go through changes – up and down and up again. It’s what life does.
BEN OKRI

Again Down Up Change
Reading, like writing, is a creative act. If readers only bring a narrow range of themselves to the book, then they’ll only see their narrow range reflected in it.
BEN OKRI

Book Reading Writing
What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.
BEN OKRI

Create Eventually Make People
Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery. Even if you lose, or are defeated by things, your triumph will always be exemplary. And if no one knows it, then there are places that do.
BEN OKRI

Discovery Dream Exemptarty Stone Thing
Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
BEN OKRI

Childhood Destiny Dream
We are living in enchanted time. With our spirits right.
BEN OKRI

Enchanted Spirit Time
One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted – knowingly or unknowingly – in ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaninglessness. If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives.’
BEN OKRI

Another Ourselves Planted Unknowingly

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.

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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ben Okri Quotes