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.
BEN OKRIDon’t neglect the gold in your own back yard.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
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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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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.
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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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A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult 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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Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
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What hope is there for individual reality or authenticity when the forces of violence and orthodoxy, the earthly powers of guns and bombs and manipulated public opinion make it impossible for us to be authentic and fulfilled human beings?
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People that don’t exist, places you’ve never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader’s creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive.
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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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When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.
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An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.
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Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
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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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The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.
BEN OKRI