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The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.

Ben Okri

The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.
BEN OKRI

Jazz Past Together
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.
BEN OKRI

Life Reality Running
Don’t neglect the gold in your own back yard.
BEN OKRI

Gold Neglect Yards
Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.
BEN OKRI

Individual Secret Stories
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
If you are working in an office, where do you find the time to write a novel? But you can finish a short story in five pages. Furthermore, a short story is a perfect place to learn the craft
BEN OKRI

Office Perfect Writing
Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
BEN OKRI

Artist Broken Enemy
a dream can be the highest point of a life
BEN OKRI

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

Down Grows Like
I’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.
BEN OKRI

Circles Past Writing
It is not important for me as a writer that you leave a piece of writing of mine with either an agreement or even a resonance with what I have said. What is important is that you leave with the resonance of what you have felt and what you thought in reaction to that.
BEN OKRI

Agreement Important Writing
Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
BEN OKRI

Art Magic Nothing
One of the greatest gifts my father gave me – unintentionally – was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
BEN OKRI

Adversity Father Tranquil
Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
BEN OKRI

Enemy Expression Silence
Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
BEN OKRI

Fear Heart Telling Stories
A man’s greatest battles are the ones he fights within himself.
BEN OKRI

Battle Fighting Men

The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.

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The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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