Top 40 Chris Abani Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Anything a man can do, I can fix.”

— Chris Abani

2. “The privilege of being a writer is that you have this opportunity to slow down and to consider things.”

— Chris Abani

3. “People think that writing is writing, but actually writing is editing. Otherwise, you’re just taking notes.”

— Chris Abani

4. “The Igbo used to say that they built their own gods. They would come together as a community, and they would express a wish. And their wish would then be brought to a priest, who would find a ritual object, and the appropriate sacrifices would be made, and the shrine would be built for the god.”

— Chris Abani

5. “You know, you can steel your heart against any kind of trouble, any kind of horror. But the simple act of kindness from a complete stranger will unstitch you.”

— Chris Abani

6. “Unlike other books or TV shows or sometimes life, my narrative worlds are stripped of implicit moral centers. There is only what you bring. That makes the characters risky in every way and the narrative, a journey of change for the reader. But I make the journey as fun as I can.”

— Chris Abani

Featured in: Fun Quotes

7. “You can count on Scandinavian literature for a certain kind of darkness, a modern mythic style.”

— Chris Abani

8. “What I’ve come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion, everyday acts of compassion. In South Africa they have a phrase called ubuntu. Ubuntu comes out of a philosophy that says, the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back at me.”

— Chris Abani

9. “What I’ve come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion.”

— Chris Abani

10. “The problem is we’re looking for something that doesn’t exist. We’re looking for authenticity. There is no such thing as authenticity. There is either good art or bad art. Art is never about its content. It’s about its scaffolding.”

— Chris Abani

11. “There was a positive side to not trying at something: you could always pretend that your life would have been different if you had.”

— Chris Abani

12. “He knew that scar, that pain, that shame, that degradation that no metaphor could contain, inscribing it on his body. And yet beyond that, he was that scar, carved by hate and smallness and fear onto the world’s face. He and everyone like him, until the earth was aflame with scarred black men dying in trees of fire.”

— Chris Abani

13. “If there was no risk, it wouldn’t be art. It wouldn’t be worth making. There is risk even in a fairy tale. Fiction is closest to pure narrative, and pure narrative is simply the logic we try to impose on an ever-changing reality.”

— Chris Abani

14. “Nigerians are everywhere. There’s an old joke, particularly about the Ibos, that when you finally land on Mars, you’re going to find a Nigerian there who has a shop that is selling Coca-Cola – who took a speculative trip 20 years ago and has been waiting for everyone else to arrive.”

— Chris Abani

15. “That women are mysterious and unknowable is something every young man grows up believing. Men, on the other hand, never think of themselves as mysterious or confusing, and we are often at a loss as to why women want to figure us out.”

— Chris Abani

16. “Before you speak, my friend, remember, a spiritual man contain his anger. Angry words are like slap in de face.”

— Chris Abani

17. “Time was the only variable in every equation of power and oppression – how long before the pot boiled over.”

— Chris Abani

18. “Elvis, stop dat! You know it is taboo to whistle at night. You will attract a spirit.”

— Chris Abani

19. “Fire and Water are archetypes, the split sides of consciousness; one aware, the other, not. The two parts of us that desire synthesis, yet resist it: the self and the shadow. But they are also the element of chance, of the random roll of dice.”

— Chris Abani

20. “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

21. “Sometimes it is enough to know that it is difficult.”

— Chris Abani

22. “Men do communicate, often very directly, but women sometimes cannot accept how simple what we have to say is. We seldom play games – we aren’t that sophisticated.”

— Chris Abani

23. “What we know about who we are comes from stories. It’s the agents of our imagination who really shape who we are.”

— Chris Abani

24. “Narrative is a very feeble weapon in the face of human darkness and yet it’s all we have. That we have to hang the transformation and survival of our species on the journey and transformation of one singular person so far outside of what we expect they can do.”

— Chris Abani

25. “I think it’s an aggregation of all of the small acts that are really transformative. I think a group of small acts transform the individual. And maybe when the individual transforms, collectively we transform.”

— Chris Abani

26. “Your anatomy is a mystery that nobody bothers explaining to us. Even when we think we have mastered one woman’s body, every body is different.”

— Chris Abani

27. “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

28. “I think that most writers who are trying to write important and difficult books are in many ways putting their own humanity into question. Sometimes the journey is finding out where you stand in relationship to your own humanity and to the humanity of others.”

— Chris Abani

29. “Something that had the quality of a dimly lit stage set just before the curtains rise on opening night. There was a rhythm to it, a beckoning, and a bittersweet tear in time.”

— Chris Abani

30. “My books are often shelved around those of Chinua Achebe and Margaret Atwood, or Chimamanda Adichie and Monica Ali. All of this depends, of course, on the bookstore and how conversant the shelf stocker is with the alphabet.”

— Chris Abani

31. “All my characters exist in risk, in the places we are either too afraid to go to, or have enough privilege not to have to, but whatever the reason, these characters I fashion go before us and come back transformed for us. For me, at least.”

— Chris Abani

32. “Abigail read in Reader’s Digest that all plane landings were controlled crashes. Like the way we live our lives, she thought. Bumble through doing the best we can and hoping that some benevolence keeps us from crashing.”

— Chris Abani

33. “I read everywhere. It’s like a bodily function. I don’t need quiet. I write and read with the TV on. I follow the TV show while I read. TV doesn’t require a lot of brainpower.”

— Chris Abani

Featured in: Reading Quotes

34. “But the thing is that, in the end, we each must decide how comfortable we are with how much we hurt other people.”

— Chris Abani

35. “Fiction is risky for writers also in that the process of making certain books, of shaping certain narratives, leaves scars and marks on your inner life.”

— Chris Abani

36. “My search is always to find ways to chronicle, to share and to document stories about people, just everyday people. Stories that offer transformation, that lean into transcendence, but that are never sentimental, that never look away from the darkest things about us.”

— Chris Abani

37. “Listening to the clack clack of the pal fronds form a percussive background to the oboe throb of the sea, he dozed off. An hour later, he woke with a start and, standing up, dusted off the seat of his trousers. White sand, in fine glittering silicon chips, clung to him, catching the sun, turning him into a patchwork fabric of diamonds and ebony.”

— Chris Abani

38. “In this time of the Internet and nonfiction, to be on an actual bookshelf in an actual bookstore is exciting in itself.”

— Chris Abani

39. “Fiction and poetry are my first loves, but the really beautiful lyrical essay can do so much that other forms cannot.”

— Chris Abani

40. “As with much of the world’s problems, they become public – or much more of interest – the moment they begin to impact the West.”

— Chris Abani

41. “Here’s the thing: You rescue us every day in small, quiet ways, so why not in this way? Let us into your mystery, tell us how you would like to be loved, show us how to see you, really see you.”

— Chris Abani

42. “This is the prevalence of ritual. To remember something that cannot be forgotten.”

— Chris Abani

43. “The question is, how do I balance narratives that are wonderful with narratives of wounds and self-loathing? And this is the difficulty that I face. I am trying to move beyond political rhetoric to a place of ethical questioning. I am asking us to balance the idea of our complete vulnerability with the complete notion of transformation or what is possible.”

— Chris Abani

44. “I truly believe that writing is a continuum – so the different genres and forms are simply stops along the same continuum. Different ideas that need to be expressed sometimes require different forms for the ideas to float better.”

— Chris Abani

45. “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

46. “She who had been taken and taken and taken. And now the one time she took for herself, the one time she had choice in the matter, it was taken away.”

— Chris Abani