Quote

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

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Ben Okri
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: March 15
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Away
Much
Magician
Really
Draw
Draws
Politician
Magic
Attention
Common

More quotes by Ben Okri

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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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Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected.
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When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity's chief instrument.
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The road will never swallow you. The river of destiny will always overcome evil. May you understand your fate. Suffering will never destroy you, but will make you stronger. 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.
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One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity. We had a bit of a rollercoaster life with some really challenging financial periods. He was always unshaken, completely tranquil, the same ebullient, laughing, jovial man.
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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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In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.
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Beware of the stories you read or tell subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.
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Creativity is the art of the impossible
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To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.
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A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.
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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.
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I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
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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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I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.
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I was born left-handed, but I was made to use my other hand. When I was writing 'Famished Road,' which was very long, I got repetitive stress syndrome. My right wrist collapsed, so I started using my left hand. The prose I wrote with my left hand came out denser, so later on I had to change it.
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When you can imagine you begin to create and when you begin to create you realize that you can create a world that you prefer to live in, rather than a world that you're suffering in.
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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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I am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people.
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