Maxine Hong Kingston > Quotes

“In a time of destruction, create something.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston

“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 job where I get paid for reading books. And I don't have to make reports on what I read or to apply what I read.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book

“I tried to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes. ”
― Maxine Hong Kingston

“I'm going away anyway. I am. Do you hear me? I may be ugly and clumsy, but one thing I am not, I'm not retarded. I may be ugly and clumsy, but one thing I am not, I'm not retarded. There's nothing wrong with my brain. Do you know what the Teacher Ghosts say about me? They tell me I'm smart, and I can win scholarships. I can get into colleges. I've already applied. I'm smart. I can do all sorts of things. I know how to get A's, and they say I could be a scientist or a mathematician if I want. I can make a living and take care of myself. So you don't have to find me a keeper who's too dumb to know a bad bargain. I'm so smart, if they say write ten pages, I can write fifteen. I can do ghost things even better than ghosts can. Not everyone thinks I'm nothing. I am not going to be a slave or a wife. Even if I am stupid and talk funny amd get sick, I won't let you turn me into a slave or a wife. I'm getting out of here. I can't stand living here anyore. It's your fault I talk weird.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston

“You can't eat straight A's.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston

“Do the right thing by whoever crosses your path. Those coincidental people are your people.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book

“Hunger also changes the world—when eating can't be a habit, than neither can seeing.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior

“Long ago in China, knot-makers tied string into buttons and frogs, and rope into bell pulls. There was one knot so complicated that it blinded the knot-maker. Finally an emperor outlawed this cruel knot, and the nobles could not order it anymore. If I had lived in China, I would have been an outlaw knot-maker.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior

“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.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston, The Fifth Book of Peace

“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 get the munchies.)”
― Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book

“...it's the duty of artists to volunteer to do particle counting. Don't leave creation up to the accountants.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book

“Not many women got to live out the daydream of women—to have a room, even a section of a room, that only gets messed up when she messes it up herself.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior

“The images of peace are ephemeral. The language of peace is subtle. The reasons for peace, the definitions of peace, the very idea of peace have to be invented, and invented again”
― Maxine Hong Kingston, The Fifth Book of Peace

“Upon Good Earth, lay the body down,
open the mouth wide, let song rush through.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston, I Love a Broad Margin to My Life

“Nobody supports me at the expense of his own adventure. Then I get bitter: I am not loved enough to be supported. That I am not a burden has to compensate for the sad envy when I look at women loved enough to be supported. Even now China wraps double binds around my feet.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior

“How unlike a dead fish a live fish is.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston, Hawai'i One Summer

“…I have changed/I am a dandelion puffball blur. My hair,/scribbles of white lines. My face. Lines/crisscross and zigzag my face./My eyes. I am looking into eyes/whose color has turned lighter, hazy brown./Wind and time are blowing me out." –Maxine Hong Kingston”
― Maxine Hong Kingston, I Love a Broad Margin to My Life