Quote

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.

Ben Okri

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Ben Okri
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: March 15
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Bring
Creative
Reading
Book
Reflected
Writing
Narrow
Like
Readers
Range
Reader

More quotes by 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.
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Creativity is the art of the impossible
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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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When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity's chief instrument.
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When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.
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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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One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
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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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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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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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A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.
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People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
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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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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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This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
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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 magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.
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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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Don't neglect the gold in your own back yard.
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