Quotes by Maxine Hong Kingston

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

“In a time of destruction, create something.”

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

“Ocean people are different from land people. The ocean never stops saying and asking into ears, which dont sleep like eyes. Those who live by the sea examine the driftwood and glass balls that floa...”

“This is the most important thing about me--I'm a card-carrying reader. All I really want to do is sit and read or lie down and read or eat and read or shit and read. I'm a trained reader. I want a ...”

“It must be that people who read go on more macrocosmic and microcosmic trips biblical god trips, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake trips. Non-readers, what do they get? (They g...”

“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.”

“A new darkness pulled away the room, inked out flesh and outlined bones. My mother was wide awake again. She become sharply herself - bone, wire, antenna - but she was not afraid. She had been pare...”

“You can't eat straight A's.”

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

“I regret always writing, writing. I gave my kid the whole plastic bag of marshmallows,so i could have 20 minutes to write. I sat at my mother's deathbed, writing.I did swab her mouth with water, an...”

“Allen Ginsberg instructs: "First thought, best thought." Oh, to have my every spontaneous thought count as poetry! No draft after draft like a draft ”

“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.”

“It must be that people who read go on more macrocosmic and microcosmic trips – biblical god trips, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Ulysses, Finnegan’s Wake trips. Non-readers, what do they get? (They...”

“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.”

“Joy and life exist nowhere but the present.”

“I want English professors to put my books on regular reading lists. An American writer. We have worked hard for fairness in the job market and housing and schooling, and our art should not be segre...”

“Of course, I'm an ethnic writer, and only benighted people see ethnics as not partaking of the macrocosmic. And only Chinese Americans who are very mad would kick an admirer of Henry James and Will...”

“If a woman is going to write a Book of Peace, it is given her to know devastation. (Fire opening line)”

“Humans are basically good. That's why it takes so much training to march march march kill kill kill kill. (Earth p269)”