The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.
BEN OKRIMaybe 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.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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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.
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Our time here is magic! It’s the only space you have to realize whatever it is that is beautiful, whatever is true, whatever is great, whatever is potential, whatever is rare, whatever is unique, in. It’s the only space.
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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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The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.
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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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Ghetto-dwellers are the great fantasists. There was an extraordinary vibrancy there, an imaginative life. When you are that poor, all you’ve got left is your belief in the imagination.
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To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.
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Don’t neglect the gold in your own back yard.
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We can still astonish the gods in humanity And be the stuff of future legends, If we but dare to be real, And have the courage to see That this is the time to dream The best dream of them all.
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The greatest religions convert the world through stories.
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I know that human beings are capable of anything.
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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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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…
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Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
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Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
BEN OKRI