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 OKRIA man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.
More Ben Okri Quotes
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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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a dream can be the highest point of a life
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An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.
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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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Who knows, maybe this whole planet is an asylum, a penal realm. A place for hard cases.
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The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.
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Bad things will happen and good things too. Your life will be full of surprises. Miracles happen only where there has been suffering. So taste your grief to the fullest.
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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.
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Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
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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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I am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people.
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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.’
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I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends’ floors, was happy, was miserable.
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We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
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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.
BEN OKRI