Chris Abani Quotes

Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.

I am a serious reader, and I read slowly.

I read here and there in books, enjoying the examples and ignoring the argument.

The kind of stuff I usually read is a bit more on the literary side, like books that I think are influential in the sense that they're doing pulpy subject matter in a refined way. Like 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy; I loved that book.

I don't read fiction at all.

I read in a weird way. It comes in waves, and then I start, like, five different books at once. It takes me six months to a year to finish them all, since I read mostly on planes.

I rarely read children's books.

I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out.

I don't very often read novels.

I will literally read anything, regardless of genre, fiction or non-fiction, as long as it's well written.

As a reader, I try to love all the literary forms equally, but I probably read novels most often.

I never show my books to Ricky. His writing is very different, and anyway, he's only read one novel in his life: 'The Catcher in the Rye.'

Life is too short to waste time on books that end badly

Never read a book to the end, nor even in sequence and without skipping.

There is no better indicators of character than the books you have.

What better way to get to know someone than through her choice and treatment of books?

Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food.

The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are, --/ Never read a book that is not a year old./ Never read any but the famed books./ Never read any but what you like.

She had always been an unashamed reader of novels.

I'm not a fast reader. I like to linger over each sentence, enjoying the style. If I don't enjoy the writing, I stop.

With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose; for good books are as scarce as good companions...

Learn to be good readers, which is perhaps a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your reading; to read faithfully, and with your best attention, all kinds of things which you have a real interest in,--a real, not an imaginary,--and which you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in.

If on a friend’s bookshelf You cannot find Joyce or Sterne Cervantes, Rabelais, or Burton, You are in danger, face the fact, So kick him first or punch him hard And from him hide behind a curtain.

I will find any excuse to go into somebody's study or ask them what they are reading. I can't think of too many other things that say what goes on in someone's head than the books they have.

I read a book twice as fast as anybody else. First, I read the beginning, and then I read the ending, and then I start in the middle and read toward whatever end I like best.