Maxine Hong Kingston

“In a time of destruction, create something.”

“Hunger also changes the world - when eating can't be a habit, then neither can seeing.”

“I've been writing since I was 7, but before that, I was orally making stories.”

“Perhaps women were once so dangerous they had to have their feet bound.”

“You can't eat straight A's.”

“I'm so proud that my offspring became a musician. I'm full of awe that we are able to have a whole family live the life of artists.”

“There can't be a pure myth, especially when the myth has been handed down in the oral tradition. As the stories are told, they change. If the stories don't change they just die.”

“When I am composing, I try to clear my mind of having to publish, or having to sell a book or find readers. That kind of thinking gets in the way.”

“You're too young to decide to live forever.”

“It seems that writing chose me. I feel that because I know history, and I know the history of so many cultures; I have lived a large life.”

“I have found things that I could have done better in 'The Woman Warrior.' But then I thought: Let the work of one's youth just stand.”

“Ocean people are different from land people. The ocean never stops saying and asking into ears, which don’t sleep like eyes. Those who live by the sea examine the driftwood and glass balls that float from foreign ships. They let scores of invisible imps loose out of found bottles. In a scoop of salt water, they revive the dead blobs that have been beached in storms and tides: fins, whiskers, and gills unfold; mouths, eyes, and colors bloom and spread. Sometimes ocean people are given to understand the newness and oldness of the world; then all morning they try to keep that boundless joy like a little sun inside their chests. The ocean also makes its people know immensity.”

“The difference between mad people and sane people... is that sane people have variety when they talk-story. Mad people have only one story that they talk over and over.”

“Let my life as Poet begin. I want the life of the Poet. I have labored for over twelve years, one thousand pages of prose. Now, I want the easiness of poetry. The brevity of the poem.”

“To me success means effectiveness in the world, that I am able to carry my ideas and values into the world - that I am able to change it in positive ways.”

“When I'm teaching, I tell my students: It's all process. Don't even think of product.”

“Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America.”

“The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed. It is much more graceful to appear favored by the gods.”

“What does old look like? Sometimes I am wrinkled, sometimes not.”

“I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for contradictions.”