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Quotations

Quotations are listed in chronological order of publication (or broadcast).

 

Chris Abani © David Shankbone The art is never about what you write about. The art is about how you write about what you write about.

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There is no such thing as authenticity. There is either good art or bad art.

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If there's nothing at risk for you, it cannot be art.

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I'm no longer a Catholic, but, you know, you're never no longer a Catholic.

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When people find themselves without mirrors, there is nothing to reflect off of, and they begin to unravel.

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If I don't get at least one e-mail every ten minutes I feel unloved. Even junk mail makes me feel seen. Sad, I know. Sigh.

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The world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion.

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We're never more beautiful than when we're most ugly.

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One day, I will be able to call myself human. For now, I am still seeking.

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Chris Abani © Beowulf Sheehan & Pen American Center This is the core of my aesthetic: belief in a deeper humanness that is beyond race, class, gender, and power, even as I know that it is not possible. And yet I strive for it in every way, even when I fail. In the end, we may never know. Perhaps it is enough [...] to know that it will always be hard. May we cry, but may we never die of heartbreak.

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What makes a man beautiful is an infinite capacity to be vulnerable.

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I hate typing the way some people hate ironing - with a passion.

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They [stories] are the only truth there is.

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Labels are matters of little interest to most writers. We are magpies, we steal shiny things from everywhere and we bring them to our nest and enhance it, so all terms are reductive in that sense.

'A Deep Humanness, a Deep Grace: Interview with Chris Abani', Research in African Literature 45.3 (Fall 2014), p. 235.

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We are creatures of metaphor.

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