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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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Ben Okri
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: March 15
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Life
Silence
Lose
Loses
Living
Stories
Moorings
Without
Orientations
Even
Orientation
Would
Mad

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Creativity is the art of the impossible
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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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A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.
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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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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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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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Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected.
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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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One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
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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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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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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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I know that human beings are capable of anything.
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When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity's chief instrument.
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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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There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
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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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People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
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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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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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