Chris Abani Quotes

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Chris Abani

Profession : Author

Birth : December 27, 1966

I have to have three or four books going simultaneously. If I'm not impressed in the first 20 pages, I don't bother reading the rest, especially with novels. I'm not a book-club style reader. I'm not looking for life lessons or wanting people to think I'm smart because I'm reading a certain book.

Chris Abani

I think a book that is over 400 pages should be split in two. I don't know that there's anything that interesting that can go on for 700 pages. I think that is a little bit indulgent.

Chris Abani

I read mostly Irish, African, Japanese, South American, and African writers. You can count on Scandinavian literature for a certain kind of darkness, a modern mythic style.

Chris Abani

I had amazing intellectual privilege as a kid. My mom taught me to read when I was two or three. When I was five, I read and wrote well enough to do my nine-year older brother's homework in exchange for chocolate or cigarettes. By the time I was 10, I was reading Orwell, Tolstoy's 'War and Peace,' and the Koran. I was reading comic books, too.

Chris Abani

Every successful artist comes from a family - parents or siblings or both - who, although equally gifted, chose not to pursue the treacherous and difficult path of the artist.

Chris Abani

There is no living African writer who has not had to, or will not have to, contend with Achebe's work. We are either resisting him - stylistically, politically, or culturally - or we are writing toward him.

Chris Abani