We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It’s just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there.
BEN OKRIMagic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.
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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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Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
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I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.
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If we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom.
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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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Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
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When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.
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Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery. Even if you lose, or are defeated by things, your triumph will always be exemplary. And if no one knows it, then there are places that do.
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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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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.
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This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
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Reading, like writing, is a creative act. If readers only bring a narrow range of themselves to the book, then they’ll only see their narrow range reflected in it.
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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.
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When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity’s chief instrument.
BEN OKRI