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Who knows, maybe this whole planet is an asylum, a penal realm. A place for hard cases.

Ben Okri

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.
BEN OKRI

Beautiful Space Unique
The greatest religions convert the world through stories.
BEN OKRI

Converting Stories World
A man’s greatest battles are the ones he fights within himself.
BEN OKRI

Battle Fighting Men
Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
BEN OKRI

Enemy Expression Silence
There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
BEN OKRI

Art Humanity Three
Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
BEN OKRI

Fear Heart Telling Stories
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 people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation… Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.
BEN OKRI

Heart Mad People
Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
BEN OKRI

Art Magic Nothing
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.
BEN OKRI

Artist Imagination Secret
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
Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
BEN OKRI

Around Destiny Expected Riddle Way
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.
BEN OKRI

Character Creativity Reading
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

Discovery Dream Exemptarty Stone Thing
We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.
BEN OKRI

Fiction Humanity Mean
When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity’s chief instrument.
BEN OKRI

Chaos Deities Eras

Who knows, maybe this whole planet is an asylum, a penal realm. A place for hard cases.

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Who knows, maybe this whole planet is an asylum, a penal realm. A place for hard cases.

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Popular Authors

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