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The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.

Ben Okri

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
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
The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.
BEN OKRI

Inspirational Love Sympathy
Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
BEN OKRI

Artist Broken Enemy
Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
BEN OKRI

Fear Heart Telling Stories
Who knows, maybe this whole planet is an asylum, a penal realm. A place for hard cases.
BEN OKRI

Asylums Cases Planet
I was going to be a scientist.
BEN OKRI

Dream Going Job Scientist
Bad things will happen and good things too. Your life will be full of surprises. Miracles happen only where there has been suffering. So taste your grief to the fullest.
BEN OKRI

Grief Miracle Suffering
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
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
What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.
BEN OKRI

Create Eventually Make People
The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.
BEN OKRI

Jazz Past Together
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
If we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom.
BEN OKRI

Afraid Dancer Love Spirit
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.
BEN OKRI

Good Higher Success Surprise
I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends’ floors, was happy, was miserable.
BEN OKRI

Homeless Miserable Wit

The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.

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The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.

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Popular Authors

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