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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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Ben Okri
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: March 15
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Gave
Jovial
Courage
Unintentionally
Greatest
Witnessing
Father
Tranquil
Bore
Bores
Gifts
Adversity

More quotes by Ben Okri

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It is not important for me as a writer that you leave a piece of writing of mine with either an agreement or even a resonance with what I have said. What is important is that you leave with the resonance of what you have felt and what you thought in reaction to that.
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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 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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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 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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Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.
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Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.
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.
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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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I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry.
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People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
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I know that human beings are capable of anything.
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Creativity is the art of the impossible
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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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Don't neglect the gold in your own back yard.
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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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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I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.
Ben Okri
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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.
Ben Okri