This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
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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One of the greatest gifts my father gave me – unintentionally – was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
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We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.
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Creativity is the art of the impossible
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There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
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We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It’s just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there.
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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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a dream can be the highest point of a life
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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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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.
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I’m fascinated by the mysterious element that runs through our lives. Everyone is looking out of the world through their emotion and history. Nobody has an absolute reality.
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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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I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
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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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Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
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I learned that life will go through changes – up and down and up again. It’s what life does.
BEN OKRI