Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
BEN OKRISuccess will never confuse you of scatter your spirit, but will make you fly higher into the good sunlight. Your life will always surprise you.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.
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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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Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
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The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.
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We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
BEN OKRI -
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.
BEN OKRI -
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.
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Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment.
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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.
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To see the madness and yet walk a perfect silver line. … That’s what the true story-teller should be: a great guide, a clear mind, who can walk a silver line in hell or madness.
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I’m conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There’s hardly a day that goes past on which I don’t write poetry.
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The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.
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I was going to be a scientist.
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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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Don’t read what everyone else is reading. Check them out later, cautiously.
BEN OKRI