When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity’s chief instrument.
BEN OKRIStories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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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.
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There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
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I was going to be a scientist.
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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.
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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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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.
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The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.
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We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
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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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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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People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
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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.
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Don’t neglect the gold in your own back yard.
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Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
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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