To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.
BEN OKRII’m conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There’s hardly a day that goes past on which I don’t write poetry.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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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 lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends’ floors, was happy, was miserable.
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We can still astonish the gods in humanity And be the stuff of future legends, If we but dare to be real, And have the courage to see That this is the time to dream The best dream of them all.
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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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a dream can be the highest point of a life
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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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The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.
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Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
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Reading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn’t care to sit next to in a train.
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Our time here is magic! It’s the only space you have to realize whatever it is that is beautiful, whatever is true, whatever is great, whatever is potential, whatever is rare, whatever is unique, in. It’s the only space.
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I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
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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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I am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people.
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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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Don’t neglect the gold in your own back yard.
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We are living in enchanted time. With our spirits right.
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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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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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I know that human beings are capable of anything.
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Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
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When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity’s chief instrument.
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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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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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Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
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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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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.
BEN OKRI