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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.

Ben Okri

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Ben Okri
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: March 15
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Writer
Best
Writing
Absolutely
Reader

More quotes by Ben Okri

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I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
Ben Okri
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I know that human beings are capable of anything.
Ben Okri
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I am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people.
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
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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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People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
Ben Okri
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The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.
Ben Okri
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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
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Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected.
Ben Okri
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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
Ben Okri
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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.
Ben Okri
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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.
Ben Okri
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When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity's chief instrument.
Ben Okri
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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.
Ben Okri
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Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
Ben Okri
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To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.
Ben Okri
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There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
Ben Okri
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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.
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.
Ben Okri
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The acknowledged legislators of the world take the world as given. They dislike mysteries, for mysteries cannot be coded, or legislated, and wonder cannot be made into law. And so these legislators police the accepted frontiers of things.
Ben Okri