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Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.

Ben Okri

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Ben Okri
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: March 15
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Enemy
Artist
Way
Wholeness
Ruined
Broken
Ought

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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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We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
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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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Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
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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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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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One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
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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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When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity's chief instrument.
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I know that human beings are capable of anything.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.
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