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What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.

Ben Okri

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
BEN OKRI

Art Poison Stories
I learned that life will go through changes – up and down and up again. It’s what life does.
BEN OKRI

Again Down Up Change
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
To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.
BEN OKRI

Anyone Home Homeless
The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.
BEN OKRI

Facts Hint Perfection
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.
BEN OKRI

Hungry Rivers World
Don’t neglect the gold in your own back yard.
BEN OKRI

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

Inventing Reality Stop Thing
Don’t try and press it down. Don’t hide from it. Don’t escape. It is life too. It is truth. But it will pass and time will put a strange honey in the bitterness. That’s the way life goes.
BEN OKRI

Escape Life Press Strange
The worst realities of our age are manufactured realities. It is therefore our task, as creative participants in the universe, to re dream our world. The fact of possessing imagination means that everything can be re dreamed. Each reality can have it
BEN OKRI

Dream Mean Reality
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 am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people.
BEN OKRI

Fighting People Share
We are living in enchanted time. With our spirits right.
BEN OKRI

Enchanted Spirit Time
People like you enrich the dreams of the worlds, and it is dreams that create history. People like you are unknowing transformers of things, protected by your own fairy-tale, by love.
BEN OKRI

Create History People Protected Transformer
I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.
BEN OKRI

Country Home Literature
A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.
BEN OKRI

Able Men Sometimes

What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.

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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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Popular Authors

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