Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
BEN OKRIIf we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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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.
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Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
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I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends’ floors, was happy, was miserable.
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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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A man’s greatest battles are the ones he fights within himself.
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What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.
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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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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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I learned that life will go through changes – up and down and up again. It’s what life does.
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To poison a nation, poison its stories. A demoralised nation tells demoralised stories to itself. Beware of the storytellers who are not fully conscious of the importance of their gifts, and who are irresponsible in the application of their art: they
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To see the madness and yet walk a perfect silver line. … That’s what the true story-teller should be: a great guide, a clear mind, who can walk a silver line in hell or madness.
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The best writing is not about the writer, the best writing is absolutely not about the writer, it’s about us, it’s about the reader.
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I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.
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Don’t neglect the gold in your own back yard.
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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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