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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.

Ben Okri

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Ben Okri
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: March 15
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Like
Strange
Present
Future
Past
Together
Come
Rough
Thing
Africa
Kind
Jazz

More quotes by Ben Okri

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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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The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.
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Reading, like writing, is a creative act. If readers only bring a narrow range of themselves to the book, then they'll only see their narrow range reflected in it.
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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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I am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people.
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To see the madness and yet walk a perfect silver line. ... That's what the true story-teller should be: a great guide, a clear mind, who can walk a silver line in hell or madness.
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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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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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The best writing is not about the writer, the best writing is absolutely not about the writer, it's about us, it's about the reader.
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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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Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
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The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.
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There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
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Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
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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 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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I know that human beings are capable of anything.
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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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Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories
Ben Okri
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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.
Ben Okri