People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
BEN OKRITo 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.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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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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People that don’t exist, places you’ve never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader’s creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive.
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The worst realities of our age are manufactured realities. It is therefore our task, as creative participants in the universe, to re dream our world. The fact of possessing imagination means that everything can be re dreamed. Each reality can have it
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You are a mischievous one. You will cause no end of trouble. You have to travel many roads before you find the river of your destiny. This life of yours will be full of riddles. You will be protected and you will never be alone.
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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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We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
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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.
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To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.
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I learned that life will go through changes – up and down and up again. It’s what life does.
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A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.
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If you are working in an office, where do you find the time to write a novel? But you can finish a short story in five pages. Furthermore, a short story is a perfect place to learn the craft
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I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
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When you can imagine you begin to create and when you begin to create you realize that you can create a world that you prefer to live in, rather than a world that you’re suffering in.
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The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.
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I know that human beings are capable of anything.
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