An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.
BEN OKRIThis 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.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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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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This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
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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 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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One of the greatest gifts my father gave me – unintentionally – was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
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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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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
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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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Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
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Success will never confuse you of scatter your spirit, but will make you fly higher into the good sunlight. Your life will always surprise you.
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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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If we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom.
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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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A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation… Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.
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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.
BEN OKRI