Ghetto-dwellers are the great fantasists. There was an extraordinary vibrancy there, an imaginative life. When you are that poor, all you’ve got left is your belief in the imagination.
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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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.
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To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.
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A man’s greatest battles are the ones he fights within himself.
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Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories
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I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
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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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One of the greatest gifts my father gave me – unintentionally – was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
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What hope is there for individual reality or authenticity when the forces of violence and orthodoxy, the earthly powers of guns and bombs and manipulated public opinion make it impossible for us to be authentic and fulfilled human beings?
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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.
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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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Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
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When 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.
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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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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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The worst realities of our age are manufactured realities. It is therefore our task, as creative participants in the universe, to re dream our world. The fact of possessing imagination means that everything can be re dreamed. Each reality can have it
BEN OKRI