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 OKRIWithout stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories
More Ben Okri Quotes
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We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
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I am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people.
BEN OKRI -
The acknowledged legislators of the world take the world as given. They dislike mysteries, for mysteries cannot be coded, or legislated, and wonder cannot be made into law. And so these legislators police the accepted frontiers of things.
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Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
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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 -
If we are true, if we can love, if we have vision, if we can have courage, we can, we should, we ought to, we will.
BEN OKRI -
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 -
I learned that life will go through changes – up and down and up again. It’s what life does.
BEN OKRI -
Success will never confuse you of scatter your spirit, but will make you fly higher into the good sunlight. Your life will always surprise you.
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I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends’ floors, was happy, was miserable.
BEN OKRI -
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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This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
BEN OKRI -
To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.
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
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I’m fascinated by the mysterious element that runs through our lives. Everyone is looking out of the world through their emotion and history. Nobody has an absolute reality.
BEN OKRI