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People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.

Ben Okri

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Ben Okri
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: March 15
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
People
Confident
Healthy
Tell
Stories

More quotes by Ben Okri

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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.
Ben Okri
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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.
Ben Okri
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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.
Ben Okri
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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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This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
Ben Okri
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I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
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.
Ben Okri
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Don't neglect the gold in your own back yard.
Ben Okri
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Creativity is the art of the impossible
Ben Okri
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One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity. We had a bit of a rollercoaster life with some really challenging financial periods. He was always unshaken, completely tranquil, the same ebullient, laughing, jovial man.
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.
Ben Okri
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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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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
Ben Okri
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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.
Ben Okri
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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.
Ben Okri
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One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
Ben Okri
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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.
Ben Okri
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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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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.
Ben Okri
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The road will never swallow you. The river of destiny will always overcome evil. May you understand your fate. Suffering will never destroy you, but will make you stronger. Success will never confuse you of scatter your spirit, but will make you fly higher into the good sunlight. Your life will always surprise you.
Ben Okri