Ben Okri Quotes
You see, I was told stories, we were all told stories as kids in Nigeria. We had to tell stories that would keep one another interested, and you weren't allowed to tell stories that everybody else knew. You had to dream up new ones.
Quotes to Explore
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I can think of no one that my grandparents knew, that told me stories and that I experienced myself, had any sense of social inferiority growing up in segregated Washington. None whatsoever.
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I've got some incredible fans actually - so loyal and they make me birthday cards and Christmas cards. I got this package of poems and artwork based around the songs. They've got this thing called 'Floetry' where they all have to put in artwork. They've set up their own competitions and stuff which is kind of amazing.
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It is not weird for a dad to be doing the dishes, the laundry, and taking the kids to school, and read them stories for bed.
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The more I read about feeding times, sleep times and waking-up times, the more inadequate and miserable I felt.
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I would enjoy flying to Mars. This was the dream of the first cosmonauts. I wish I could realize it! I am ready to fly without coming back.
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Being 16 years old and getting an electric guitar is never going to get old. There's always going to be kids making music. There's always going to be kids in bands.
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But black people fall for that same argument, and they go around talking about law breakers. We did not make the laws in this country. We are neither morally nor legally confined to those laws. Those laws that keep them up, keep us down.
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For being in a relationship or to be linked up with somebody, you need to have time. I hang out with my friends just at my leisure, but there's no time to get into any link up.
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I started out with a dream to make a star in a jar in my garage, and I ended up meeting the President of the United States!
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Regulators are going to have to come up with a way to treat Bitcoin that is balanced and thoughtful but also recognize that this is a global phenomenon.
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Anyone who still supports George Bush would still let Michael Jackson babysit their kids.
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Our intention is to really explore this transition and, beyond that, explore the particular things that someone comes up against when they're gay or lesbian.
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Back in 1968, when I was 30, my entire life blew up. I had a life plan, and it collapsed for no rational reason.
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There's no such thing as a writer's block. If you're having trouble writing, well, pick up the pen and write. No matter what, keep that hand moving. Writing is really a physical activity.
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In Denver, I was a homebody, and that's a life I'd chosen with great happiness. I wanted that break from the arc lights and focus on building a lovely home, have some fun, look after my kids and do things that I had missed out on while pursuing my dream.
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Kids are starting at such a low base rate in terms of fitness that it's taking them years to catch up to where people like me started from. Every little bit is making it more difficult for kids to succeed on a world stage.
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The dirty little secret is that I grew up in a household where there were no carbohydrates allowed, ever. No cookies, no bread, no potatoes, no rice. My mother was very extreme in terms of what she served. Since I left home more than 40 years ago, I've been making it right for myself.
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The reason I got into acting was not to explore myself. I was a reader, I didn't care about acting. I got into it in college, but I had no interest really in that, in getting up in front of anybody.
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To be honest dinner conversations was the worst bit about being a child and listening to the boring people around me.
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Toward the end of my pregnancy, I felt really big - I gained about 40 pounds, which is a lot for my size.
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To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?
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I think sometimes we're meant to do something but things aren't lined up correctly.
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You see, I was told stories, we were all told stories as kids in Nigeria. We had to tell stories that would keep one another interested, and you weren't allowed to tell stories that everybody else knew. You had to dream up new ones.
