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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

One of the greatest gifts my father gave me – unintentionally – was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
BEN OKRI

Adversity Father Tranquil
Creativity is the art of the impossible
BEN OKRI

Art Creativity Impossible
Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
BEN OKRI

Childhood Destiny Dream
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
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…
BEN OKRI

Fighting Heroism People
The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us.
BEN OKRI

Birds Fish Inside Magic Strange
$Ben Okri Quote - The Nigerian storyteller Ben Okri says that ‘In a fractured age, when cynicism is god, here is a possible heresy: we live by stories, we also live in them.$

The Nigerian storyteller Ben Okri says that ‘In a fractured age, when cynicism is god, here is a possible heresy: we live by stories, we also live in them.
BEN OKRI

Age Giving Stories
Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment.
BEN OKRI

Dream Flower Strong
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
There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
BEN OKRI

Art Humanity Three
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

Power Should Vision
Ghetto-dwellers are the great fantasists. There was an extraordinary vibrancy there, an imaginative life. When you are that poor, all you’ve got left is your belief in the imagination.
BEN OKRI

Ghetto Imagination Vibrancy
To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.
BEN OKRI

Belief Quite Situation Something
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
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.
BEN OKRI

Soul Stories Three
Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.
BEN OKRI

Individual Secret Stories

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ben Okri Quotes