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 OKRICreativity is the art of the impossible
More Ben Okri Quotes
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When you can imagine you begin to create and when you begin to create you realize that you can create a world that you prefer to live in, rather than a world that you’re suffering in.
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The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.
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If we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom.
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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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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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When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.
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Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
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People that don’t exist, places you’ve never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader’s creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive.
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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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People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
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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.
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The worst realities of our age are manufactured realities. It is therefore our task, as creative participants in the universe, to re dream our world. The fact of possessing imagination means that everything can be re dreamed. Each reality can have it
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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.
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Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.
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To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.
BEN OKRI