I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.
BEN OKRIPeople 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.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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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 higher the artist, the fewer the gestures. The fewer the tools, the greater the imagination. The greater the will, the greater the secret failure.
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Maybe there are only three kinds of stories: those we live, those we tell, and those that help our souls fly upwards to a greater life.
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One of the greatest gifts my father gave me – unintentionally – was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
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The greatest religions convert the world through stories.
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An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.
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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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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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Don’t despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.
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The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us.
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Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment.
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The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.
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I was going to be a scientist.
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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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Literature doesn’t have a country. Shakespeare is an African writer. His Falstaff, for example, is very African in his appetite for life, his largeness of spirit. The characters of Turgenev are ghetto dwellers. Dickens characters are Nigerians.
BEN OKRI