I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.
BEN OKRIThe best writing is not about the writer, the best writing is absolutely not about the writer, it’s about us, it’s about the reader.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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Don’t neglect the gold in your own back yard.
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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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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.
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The higher the artist, the fewer the gestures. The fewer the tools, the greater the imagination. The greater the will, the greater the secret failure.
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To poison a nation, poison its stories. A demoralised nation tells demoralised stories to itself. Beware of the storytellers who are not fully conscious of the importance of their gifts, and who are irresponsible in the application of their art: they
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One of the greatest gifts my father gave me – unintentionally – was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
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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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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 you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.
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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 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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An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.
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A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.
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I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
BEN OKRI -
Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories
BEN OKRI








