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Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.

Ben Okri

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 OKRI

Artist Imagination Secret
I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.
BEN OKRI

Country Home Literature
To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.
BEN OKRI

Belief Quite Situation Something
I learned that life will go through changes – up and down and up again. It’s what life does.
BEN OKRI

Again Down Up Change
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.
BEN OKRI

Hungry Rivers World
Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
BEN OKRI

Enemy Expression Silence
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.
BEN OKRI

Character Creativity Reading
There is a kind of expressed love which is easy to subvert. When a figure is loved for their deeds, their conquests, their heroism, their goodness, their love of the people, these are easy enough to destroy… But there is a kind of love which is felt for apparently no reason…
BEN OKRI

Fighting Heroism People
Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery. Even if you lose, or are defeated by things, your triumph will always be exemplary. And if no one knows it, then there are places that do.
BEN OKRI

Discovery Dream Exemptarty Stone Thing
The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.
BEN OKRI

Karma Law Simple
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.
BEN OKRI

Power Should Vision
Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
BEN OKRI

Artist Broken Enemy
I am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people.
BEN OKRI

Fighting People Share
Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.
BEN OKRI

Inspiring Night Water
This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
BEN OKRI

Down Grows Like
People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
BEN OKRI

Healthy People Stories

Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.

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Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.

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