Quote

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

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Ben Okri
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: March 15
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
World
Mystery
Coded
Wonder
Acknowledged
Law
Legislators
Given
Frontiers
Cannot
Mysteries
Take
Dislike
Made
Accepted
Things
Police
Legislated

More quotes by Ben Okri

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People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
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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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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.
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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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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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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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One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
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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 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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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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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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I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
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I know that human beings are capable of anything.
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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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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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I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry.
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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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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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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.
Ben Okri
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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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