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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
Present
Future
Past
Together
Come
Rough
Thing
Africa
Kind
Jazz
Like
Strange

More quotes by Ben Okri

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It is not important for me as a writer that you leave a piece of writing of mine with either an agreement or even a resonance with what I have said. What is important is that you leave with the resonance of what you have felt and what you thought in reaction to that.
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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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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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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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Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
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Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
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Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected.
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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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This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
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To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.
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Don't neglect the gold in your own back yard.
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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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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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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 earliest storytellers were magi, seers, bards, griots, shamans. They were, it would seem, old as time, and as terrifying to gaze upon as the mysteries with which they wrestled .. (they) helped the community live though one more darkness, with eyes wide open, and with hearts set alight.
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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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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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We can still astonish the gods in humanity And be the stuff of future legends, If we but dare to be real, And have the courage to see That this is the time to dream The best dream of them all.
Ben Okri
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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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When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.
Ben Okri