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.
BEN OKRII know that human beings are capable of anything.
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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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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What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.
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Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
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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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Who knows, maybe this whole planet is an asylum, a penal realm. A place for hard cases.
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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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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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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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There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
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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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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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The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.
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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 man’s greatest battles are the ones he fights within himself.
BEN OKRI