Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
BEN OKRIIf 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
More Ben Okri Quotes
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This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we’re born into stories. I say we’re also born from stories.
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Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
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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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I was told stories, we were all told stories as kids in Nigeria. We had to tell stories that would keep one another interested, and you weren’t allowed to tell stories that everybody else knew. You had to dream up new ones.
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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.
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An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.
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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 most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.
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One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits.
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If we are true, if we can love, if we have vision, if we can have courage, we can, we should, we ought to, we will.
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There is a kind of expressed love which is easy to subvert. When a figure is loved for their deeds, their conquests, their heroism, their goodness, their love of the people, these are easy enough to destroy… But there is a kind of love which is felt for apparently no reason…
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Don’t read what everyone else is reading. Check them out later, cautiously.
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Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment.
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Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
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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.
BEN OKRI