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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

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 OKRI

Facts Hint Perfection
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.
BEN OKRI

Book Reading Writing
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
a dream can be the highest point of a life
BEN OKRI

Dream Highest Life
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
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
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 OKRI

Create History People Protected Transformer
If we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom.
BEN OKRI

Afraid Dancer Love Spirit
A man’s greatest battles are the ones he fights within himself.
BEN OKRI

Battle Fighting Men
One of the greatest gifts my father gave me – unintentionally – was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
BEN OKRI

Adversity Father Tranquil
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.
BEN OKRI

Escape Life Press Strange
I’m fascinated by the mysterious element that runs through our lives. Everyone is looking out of the world through their emotion and history. Nobody has an absolute reality.
BEN OKRI

Life Reality Running
This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
BEN OKRI

Down Grows Like
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 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 OKRI

Artist Imagination Secret

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ben Okri Quotes