I learned that life will go through changes – up and down and up again. It’s what life does.
BEN OKRIWhen you can imagine you begin to create and when you begin to create you realize that you can create a world that you prefer to live in, rather than a world that you’re suffering in.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.
BEN OKRI -
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.
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To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.
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You are a mischievous one. You will cause no end of trouble. You have to travel many roads before you find the river of your destiny. This life of yours will be full of riddles. You will be protected and you will never be alone.
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Don’t despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.
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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.
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This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
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I know that human beings are capable of anything.
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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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The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.
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The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.
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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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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.
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The greatest religions convert the world through stories.
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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