Chris Abani Quotes

I had the fortune or misfortune to learn how to read fluently starting at the age of three. So I had read maybe 150 books by the time I hit 1st grade. And I already knew that the teachers were lying to me.

Now, my mom did not read well and she read 'True Romance' magazines, but she read with me. And she would spend 30 minutes a day, her finger going along the page, and I learned to read. Eventually, by the time I was four and a half, she could iron and I could sit there and read the 'True Romance.' And that was wonderful.

By the time I was 12, I was reading my parents' books because there weren't teenage books then.

I think that being read to every night is the reason why I was plowing through volume after volume of 'Nancy Drew' books all by myself by the time I reached the first grade. I loved stories. I loved the escape. I had a vivid imagination.

Childhood reading is so important.

When I was 8, I was reading 'Gone with the Wind' and 'Pride and Prejudice' and all that, not knowing it wasn't my reading level.

I don't remember being taught to read, and by the time I was seven years old, I had read a very great many books, good, bad, and indifferent.

My dad taught me to read by reading comic strips in the Saturday paper and Archie comics.

Since I was really small, my mum says I wouldn't talk at breakfast because I would just read the back of the cereal packet.

The real menace in dealing with a five-year-old is that in no time at all you begin to sound like a five-year-old.

My childhood may have been more demented than most, because I learned to read very early and was allowed to read whatever I wanted.

Basically, I learned to read by reading 'Peanuts,' just wanting to know what they were saying. I was 4 or 5 or whatever. I think it's a fairly common story.

If you read in front of your kids, it's very likely that they'll become readers, too.

I was given a dictionary when I was seven, and I read it because I had nothing else to read. I read it the way you read a book.

I started reading when I was about three, a little over three.

Every child's taste is different. Don't worry if they're not reading 'War and Peace' at age 12. First, build a good foundation and a positive attitude about reading by letting them pick the stories they enjoy. Make friends with a bookseller or librarian. They are a wealth of information on finding books that kids enjoy.

I was a very avid reader when I was a child, and I also was a good listener.

I was fantastically well versed by the time I left school. I had a teacher who put 'A Clockwork Orange' my way, and 'Catcher in the Rye.'

I don't want to approach reading from the viewpoint of that it's a pleasant adjunct to your life. I want to approach it from the idea that you have to read or you're going to suffer. There's a difference to be made - and you can make it if you read with your child.

I'd always been a big reader. I credit my mom for giving me my love of reading.

Basically, I learned to read by reading 'Peanuts,' just wanting to know what they were saying.

I was about 11 or 12 when I began to pick up my mother's books.

My mother had been an English teacher in India before she came to the U.K., and she taught me to read early on - not only in English, but in Hindi, too. My teachers didn't like the fact that I was reading more quickly than they were teaching, and as a consequence, I would sometimes get bored in class.

The manner in which I learned to read and write, not only had great influence on my own mind, as I acquired it with the most perfect ease, so much so, that I have no recollection whatever of learning the alphabet

My mother taught me to read in part by reading me Walt Disney comics, and I never stopped.