Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
BEN OKRI
BEN OKRI
Ben Okri on expression
Ben Okri79 quotes“Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.”
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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.
Ben OkriBen Okri In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.
Ben OkriBen Okri I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.
Ben OkriBen Okri The higher the artist, the fewer the gestures. The fewer the tools, the greater the imagination. The greater the will, the greater the secret failure.
Ben OkriBen Okri One of the greatest gifts my father gave me – unintentionally – was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
Ben OkriBen Okri The greatest religions convert the world through stories.
Ben OkriBen Okri People like you enrich the dreams of the worlds, and it is dreams that create history. People like you are unknowing transformers of things, protected by your own fairy-tale, by love.
Ben OkriBen Okri We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
Ben OkriBen Okri 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 OkriBen Okri One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits.
Ben OkriBen Okri 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 OkriBen Okri 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 OkriBen Okri We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.
Ben OkriBen Okri A man’s greatest battles are the ones he fights within himself.
Ben OkriBen Okri We are living in enchanted time. With our spirits right.
Ben OkriBen Okri The acknowledged legislators of the world take the world as given. They dislike mysteries, for mysteries cannot be coded, or legislated, and wonder cannot be made into law. And so these legislators police the accepted frontiers of things.
Ben OkriBen Okri
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Meet the writers
More on expression
The meaning of life is contained in every single expression of life.
Michael JacksonMichael Jackson I’ve learned that love is not possessive and I’ve learned that love won’t wait. Now I’ve learned that love needs expression, but I learned too late.
Michael JacksonMichael Jackson The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression – all of that is very important.
Arnold SchwarzeneggerArnold Schwarzenegger Everyone of our relationships with nature and man must be a definite expression of our real, individual life.
Karl MarxKarl Marx I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.
Mahatma GandhiMahatma Gandhi Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
George Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard Shaw In an expression of true gratitude, sadness is conspicuous only by its absence.
Marcus AureliusMarcus Aurelius Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
George Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard Shaw