Stories. 2 notes.

So true:

“To poison a nation, poison its stories. A demoralised nation tells demoralised stories to itself. Beware of the storytellers who are not fully conscious of the importance of their gifts, and who are irresponsible in the application of their art: they could unwittingly help along the psychic destruction of their people.” [1, 2]

This quote originates from the book ++A Way of Being Free++ (1997), a collection of essays and aphorisms written by the Booker Prize-winning Nigerian author ++Sir Ben Okri++.

Hat tip to Jim O’Shaughnessy:

So true:

Orhan Pamuk: I understand, I am an admirer of René Girard’s work but I have come across him later in years, The Scapegoat, Sacrifice, I like these subjects, but on the other hand it was a rather simplistic or simple idea that I think that even in the worst conditions that to be able to tell a story is a sort of a great relief for me, that I believe that in fact if there are Hegelian minds who are trying to over- rule each other which is a Hegelian point of view of history, I think that my understanding of people’s wills or minds clashing is who is going to tell who’s story earlier? Who is going to impose his or her story? It think all of my characters in various books be it My Name is Red, be it The Black Book or even Snow, the one who manages to tell his story, pass his story, survives or telling stories is a way of surviving and continuing to live.