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Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.

Ben Okri

I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
BEN OKRI

Order Smile Squares
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.
BEN OKRI

Heart Mad People
In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.
BEN OKRI

Hungry Rivers World
Creativity is the art of the impossible
BEN OKRI

Art Creativity Impossible
The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.
BEN OKRI

Attention Common Magic
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
It is not important for me as a writer that you leave a piece of writing of mine with either an agreement or even a resonance with what I have said. What is important is that you leave with the resonance of what you have felt and what you thought in reaction to that.
BEN OKRI

Agreement Important Writing
When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.
BEN OKRI

Inventing Reality Stop Thing
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
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

Facts Hint Perfection
Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
BEN OKRI

Art Hide Magic Nothing
We are living in enchanted time. With our spirits right.
BEN OKRI

Enchanted Spirit Time
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.
BEN OKRI

Beautiful Despair Secret
Who knows, maybe this whole planet is an asylum, a penal realm. A place for hard cases.
BEN OKRI

Asylums Cases Planet
Bad things will happen and good things too. Your life will be full of surprises. Miracles happen only where there has been suffering. So taste your grief to the fullest.
BEN OKRI

Grief Miracle Suffering
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

Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.

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Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.

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Popular Authors

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