Quote

One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits. The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us.

Ben Okri

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Ben Okri
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: March 15
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Life
Spirit
Ocean
Fishes
Dolphins
Dream
Rock
Souls
Continent
Earth
Rocks
Bed
Continents
Soul
Magic
Plant
Mighty
Live
Deep
Sky
Spirits
Human
Inside
Deeper
Plants
Humans
Strange
Bird
Birds
Whole
History
Sea
Monsters
Undiscovered

More quotes by Ben Okri

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We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
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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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I know that human beings are capable of anything.
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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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People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
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Don't despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.
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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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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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There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
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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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I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
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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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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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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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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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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 anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.
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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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Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
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When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity's chief instrument.
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