black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Who knows, maybe this whole planet is an asylum, a penal realm. A place for hard cases.

Ben Okri

One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted – knowingly or unknowingly – in ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaninglessness. If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives.’
BEN OKRI

Another Ourselves Planted Unknowingly
What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.
BEN OKRI

Create Eventually Make People
I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends’ floors, was happy, was miserable.
BEN OKRI

Homeless Miserable Wit
Don’t read what everyone else is reading. Check them out later, cautiously.
BEN OKRI

Checks Everyone Read Reading
People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
BEN OKRI

Healthy People Stories
I was told stories, we were all told stories as kids in Nigeria. We had to tell stories that would keep one another interested, and you weren’t allowed to tell stories that everybody else knew. You had to dream up new ones.
BEN OKRI

Children Dream Kids
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.
BEN OKRI

Ghetto Imagination Vibrancy
Who knows, maybe this whole planet is an asylum, a penal realm. A place for hard cases.
BEN OKRI

Asylums Cases Planet
I was going to be a scientist.
BEN OKRI

Dream Going Job Scientist
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
We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.
BEN OKRI

Fiction Humanity Mean
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
Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment.
BEN OKRI

Dream Flower Strong
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.
BEN OKRI

Inspirational Love Sympathy
Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
BEN OKRI

Art Hide Magic Nothing
Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
BEN OKRI

Enemy Expression Silence

Who knows, maybe this whole planet is an asylum, a penal realm. A place for hard cases.

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Who knows, maybe this whole planet is an asylum, a penal realm. A place for hard cases.

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