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Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.

Ben Okri

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
Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
BEN OKRI

Art Hide Magic Nothing
Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
BEN OKRI

Enemy Expression Silence
I’m conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There’s hardly a day that goes past on which I don’t write poetry.
BEN OKRI

Circles Past Writing
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
This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
BEN OKRI

Down Grows Like
One of the greatest gifts my father gave me – unintentionally – was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
BEN OKRI

Adversity Father Tranquil
The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.
BEN OKRI

Attention Common Magic
I know that human beings are capable of anything.
BEN OKRI

Capable Humans Knows
A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.
BEN OKRI

Able Men Sometimes
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
Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
BEN OKRI

Art Magic Nothing
I learned that life will go through changes – up and down and up again. It’s what life does.
BEN OKRI

Again Down Up Change
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
Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
BEN OKRI

Childhood Destiny Dream
Literature doesn’t have a country. Shakespeare is an African writer. His Falstaff, for example, is very African in his appetite for life, his largeness of spirit. The characters of Turgenev are ghetto dwellers. Dickens characters are Nigerians.
BEN OKRI

Character Country Ghetto

Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.

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Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.

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Popular Authors

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