“ 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. Chris Abani
“ Sometimes I feel very alone. I am a bit of a nomad. Many people in sort of emerging countries, emerging economies, find themselves displaced. So there is that sense, and so I'm part of a whole, I thin… Chris Abani
“ 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.… Chris Abani
“ 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
“ Time was the only variable in every equation of power and oppression-how long before the pot boiled over. Chris Abani
“ He too, it seemed, had come to believe that he could somehow escape history. That it was possible, and even desirable, to live in a perpetual present. Chris Abani
“ Circuses are about entertainment and juggling and animals and all that shit. Sideshows are about freaks, about people and the limits of acceptability. We push those limits. If a circus is an escape, F… Chris Abani
“ What you hear is not my voice. I have not spoken in three years: not since I left boot camp. It has been three years of a senseless war, and though the reasons for it are clear, and though we will con… Chris Abani
“ There had been many such experiments when he worked in South Africa, in Vlakplaas, a notorious apartheid death camp. Chris Abani
“ 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… Chris Abani
“ 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 keep… Chris Abani
“ I would say it is because the striving and the power keep you from realizing just how helpless you really are. It protects you from facing the fact that others are manipulating you, that regardless of… Chris Abani
“ Elvis, take de passport. You know I myself no go ever go America,' Redemption said. 'Why?''Because dis na my home. I be area boy, alaye. I no go fit for States. Chris Abani
“ There are no easy ways to speak these words. No way to honor love and truth without something getting lost in translation. It is made even more complex when one party is dead, silent to this world. An… Chris Abani
“ 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
“ 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… Chris Abani
