The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.
BEN OKRIThe greatest religions convert the world through stories.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories
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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 learned that life will go through changes – up and down and up again. It’s what life does.
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There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
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Don’t read what everyone else is reading. Check them out later, cautiously.
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Creativity is the art of the impossible
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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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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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The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.
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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.
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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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Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
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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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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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It is not important for me as a writer that you leave a piece of writing of mine with either an agreement or even a resonance with what I have said. What is important is that you leave with the resonance of what you have felt and what you thought in reaction to that.
BEN OKRI