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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.

Ben Okri

The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.
BEN OKRI

Jazz Past Together
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
To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.
BEN OKRI

Anyone Home Homeless
A man’s greatest battles are the ones he fights within himself.
BEN OKRI

Battle Fighting Men
We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
BEN OKRI

Definitions Destination Require Stop
Don’t neglect the gold in your own back yard.
BEN OKRI

Gold Neglect Yards
People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
BEN OKRI

Healthy People Stories
There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
BEN OKRI

Art Humanity Three
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
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
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
Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
BEN OKRI

Childhood Destiny Dream
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
Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
BEN OKRI

Artist Broken Enemy
Literature doesn’t have a country. Shakespeare is an African writer. His Falstaff, for example, is very African in his appetite for life, his largeness of spirit. The characters of Turgenev are ghetto dwellers. Dickens characters are Nigerians.
BEN OKRI

Character Country Ghetto
There is a kind of expressed love which is easy to subvert. When a figure is loved for their deeds, their conquests, their heroism, their goodness, their love of the people, these are easy enough to destroy… But there is a kind of love which is felt for apparently no reason…
BEN OKRI

Fighting Heroism People

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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If we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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