Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
Interpretation
Stories have the power to overcome fear and expand our emotional capacity.
In this quote, Ben Okri emphasizes the transformative power of storytelling. By engaging with stories, whether through reading or sharing, individuals can confront their fears and broaden their understanding of compassion and empathy, ultimately nurturing their emotional growth and resilience.
In practice
During a motivational speech to encourage students to read more.
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.
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.
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.
I began my writing life as a poet, so poetry has always been fundamental. I evolved from poetry to journalism to stories to novels. But poetry was always there.
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.
We can still astonish the gods in humanity_x000D_ _x000D_ And be the stuff of future legends,_x000D_ _x000D_ If we but dare to be real,_x000D_ _x000D_ And have the courage to see_x000D_ _x000D_ That this is the time to dream_x000D_ _x000D_ The best dream of them all.
Genius abhors consensus because when consensus is reached, thinking stops. Stop nodding your head.
criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person's precious pride, hurt his sense of importace and arouse resentment.
No sanction can stand against ignited minds.
Solvitur ambulando . . . it is solved by walking.
When every autumn people said it could not last through the winter, and when every spring there was still no end in sight, only the hope that out of it all some good would accrue to mankind kept men and nations fighting. When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.
I had always been feeling uncomfortable in my mind about giving advice to others and not acting upon it myself.
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