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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 Okri

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

Inventing Reality Stop Thing
When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity’s chief instrument.
BEN OKRI

Chaos Deities Eras
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
Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
BEN OKRI

Art Magic Nothing
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

Dream Flower Strong
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
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
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
People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
BEN OKRI

Healthy People Stories
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
This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
BEN OKRI

Down Grows Like
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.
BEN OKRI

Come Creative Mind Pianetd Power
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
To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.
BEN OKRI

Anyone Home Homeless
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
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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