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I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends’ floors, was happy, was miserable.

Ben Okri

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

Down Grows Like
We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
BEN OKRI

Definitions Destination Require Stop
I was going to be a scientist.
BEN OKRI

Dream Going Job Scientist
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

Escape Life Press Strange
The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.
BEN OKRI

Attention Common Magic
Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
BEN OKRI

Fear Heart Telling Stories
Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
BEN OKRI

Childhood Destiny Dream
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
To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.
BEN OKRI

Anyone Home Homeless
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
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.
BEN OKRI

Heart Mad People
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
I know that human beings are capable of anything.
BEN OKRI

Capable Humans Knows
I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
BEN OKRI

Order Smile Squares
People like you enrich the dreams of the worlds, and it is dreams that create history. People like you are unknowing transformers of things, protected by your own fairy-tale, by love.
BEN OKRI

Create History People Protected Transformer
Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
BEN OKRI

Artist Broken Enemy

I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends’ floors, was happy, was miserable.

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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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