If we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom.
BEN OKRIDon’t read what everyone else is reading. Check them out later, cautiously.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted – knowingly or unknowingly – in ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaninglessness. If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives.’
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Maybe there are only three kinds of stories: those we live, those we tell, and those that help our souls fly upwards to a greater life.
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The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.
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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 going to be a scientist.
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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.
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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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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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There is a kind of expressed love which is easy to subvert. When a figure is loved for their deeds, their conquests, their heroism, their goodness, their love of the people, these are easy enough to destroy… But there is a kind of love which is felt for apparently no reason…
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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.
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I know that human beings are capable of anything.
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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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One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits.
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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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We are living in enchanted time. With our spirits right.
BEN OKRI