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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

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.
BEN OKRI

Character Creativity Reading
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
a dream can be the highest point of a life
BEN OKRI

Dream Highest Life
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
When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity’s chief instrument.
BEN OKRI

Chaos Deities Eras
A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.
BEN OKRI

Able Men Sometimes
Our time here is magic! It’s the only space you have to realize whatever it is that is beautiful, whatever is true, whatever is great, whatever is potential, whatever is rare, whatever is unique, in. It’s the only space.
BEN OKRI

Beautiful Space Unique
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.
BEN OKRI

Heart Mad People
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
An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.
BEN OKRI

Darker Darkness Inner
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.
BEN OKRI

Mind Perfect Story
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
We are living in enchanted time. With our spirits right.
BEN OKRI

Enchanted Spirit Time
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
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.
BEN OKRI

Come Creative Mind Pianetd Power
We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
BEN OKRI

Definitions Destination Require Stop

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ben Okri Quotes