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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

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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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If we are true, if we can love, if we have vision, if we can have courage, we can, we should, we ought to, we will.
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Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
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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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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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This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we're born into stories. I say we're also born from stories.
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To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.
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Our time here is magic! It's the only space you have to realize whatever it is that is beautiful, whatever is true, whatever is great, whatever is potential, whatever is rare, whatever is unique, in. It's the only space.
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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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Don't neglect the gold in your own back yard.
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The worst realities of our age are manufactured realities. It is therefore our task, as creative participants in the universe, to re dream our world. The fact of possessing imagination means that everything can be re dreamed. Each reality can have it
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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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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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Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories
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Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
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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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I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
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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.
Ben Okri