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There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.

Ben Okri

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Ben Okri
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: March 15
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Three
Visionaries
Traditions
Realistic
Wild
Tradition
Ought
Humanity
Art
Visionary

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To anyone who is homeless, I say, find a home.
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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 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.
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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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Don't neglect the gold in your own back yard.
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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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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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Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories
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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'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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We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
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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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Creativity is the art of the impossible
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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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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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One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
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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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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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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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