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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.

Ben Okri

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

Belief Quite Situation Something
Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
BEN OKRI

Fear Heart Telling Stories
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

Character Country Ghetto
Don’t neglect the gold in your own back yard.
BEN OKRI

Gold Neglect Yards
We are living in enchanted time. With our spirits right.
BEN OKRI

Enchanted Spirit Time
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
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
Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
BEN OKRI

Childhood Destiny Dream
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
A man’s greatest battles are the ones he fights within himself.
BEN OKRI

Battle Fighting Men
The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.
BEN OKRI

Facts Hint Perfection
Success will never confuse you of scatter your spirit, but will make you fly higher into the good sunlight. Your life will always surprise you.
BEN OKRI

Good Higher Success Surprise
Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
BEN OKRI

Enemy Expression Silence
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
When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.
BEN OKRI

Inventing Reality Stop Thing
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

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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