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When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity's chief instrument.

Ben Okri

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Ben Okri
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: March 15
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Chaos
Instruments
Clamorous
Music
Deity
Deities
Eras
Chief
Chiefs
Instrument

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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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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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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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Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
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People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
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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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One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
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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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I'm fascinated by the mysterious element that runs through our lives. Everyone is looking out of the world through their emotion and history. Nobody has an absolute reality.
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The best writing is not about the writer, the best writing is absolutely not about the writer, it's about us, it's about the reader.
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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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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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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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This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
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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.
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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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To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.
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To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.
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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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We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
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