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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.

Ben Okri

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Ben Okri
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: March 15
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Perfect
Madness
True
Line
Stories
Walk
Great
Walks
Mind
Hell
Teller
Lines
Guide
Clear
Silver
Story
Guides

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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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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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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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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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One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
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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 am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people.
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People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
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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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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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Creativity is the art of the impossible
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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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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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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.
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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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Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
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Don't neglect the gold in your own back yard.
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