Hong Kingston Quotes & Sayings

My job is my own only land. — Maxine Hong Kingston

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. — Maxine Hong Kingston

You must not tell anyone,' my mother said, 'what I am about to tell you.' — Maxine Hong Kingston

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. — Maxine Hong Kingston

But the men - hungry, greedy, tired of planting in dry soil - had been forced to leave the village in order to send food-money home. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Once you open your eyes in the water, you become a flying creature ... How unlike a dead fish a live fish is. — Maxine Hong Kingston

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. — Maxine Hong Kingston

When alone I am not aware of my race or my sex, both in need of social contexts for definition. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Probably all babies, having recently been nothing, have a tenuous hold on life. — Maxine Hong Kingston

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. — Maxine Hong Kingston

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

I've learned exactly who the enemy are. I easily recognize them-business-suited in their modern American executive guise, each boss two feet taller than I am and impossible to meet eye to eye. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Do the right thing by whoever crosses your path. Those coincidental people are your people. — Maxine Hong Kingston

You're too young to decide to live forever. — Maxine Hong Kingston

People who can comfort the dead can also chase after them to hurt them further-a reverse ancestor worship. — Maxine Hong Kingston

The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed. It is much more graceful to appear favored by the gods. — Maxine Hong Kingston

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

Before we can leave our parents, they stuff our heads like the suitcases which they jam-pack with homemade underwear. — Maxine Hong Kingston

When you raise girls, you're raising children for strangers. — Maxine Hong Kingston

His Good list outstripped the Evil list; Good may always preponderate in this method of reckoning. — Maxine Hong Kingston

When these pictures burst, the stars drew yet further apart. Black space opened. She got to her feet to fight better — Maxine Hong Kingston

For hours she lay on the ground, alternately body and space. Sometimes a vision of normal comfort obliterated reality: — Maxine Hong Kingston

The black well of sky and stars went out and out and out forever; her body and her complexity seemed to disappear. — Maxine Hong Kingston

I may be ugly and clumsy, but one thing I'm not, I'm not retarded. — Maxine Hong Kingston

When we Chinese girls listened to the adults talk-story, we learned that we failed if we grew up to be but wives or slaves. We could be heroines, swordswomen. Even if she had to rage across all China, a swordswoman got even with anybody who hurt her family. Perhaps women were once so dangerous that they had to have their feet bound. — Maxine Hong Kingston

We're all under the same sky and walk the same earth; we're alive together during the same moment. — Maxine Hong Kingston

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. — Maxine Hong Kingston

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

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. — Maxine Hong Kingston

My aunt could not have been the lone romantic who gave up everything for sex. Women in the old China did not choose. Some man had commanded her to lie with him and be his secret evil. — Maxine Hong Kingston

As they walked back to the laundry, Brave Orchid showed her sister where to buy the various groceries and how to avoid Skid Row. "On days when you are not feeling safe, walk around it. But you can walk through it unharmed on your strong days." On weak days you notice bodies on the sidewalk, and you are visible to Panhandler Ghosts and Mugger Ghosts. — Maxine Hong Kingston

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, and feel
her pliant tongue enjoy water, then harden
and die. Before I had language,
before I had stories, I wanted to write.
That desire is going away.
I've said what I have to say.
I'll stop and look at things I called
distractions. Become a reader of the world,
no more writer of it. — Maxine Hong Kingston

When I'm teaching, I tell my students: It's all process. Don't even think of product. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Hunger also changes the world - when eating can't be a habit, than neither can seeing. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Daughters-in-law lived with their husbands' parents, not their own; a synonym for marriage in Chinese is taking a daughter-in-law. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Any merchant who advertises 'Honest Scales' must have been thinking about weighing them. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Human beings don't work like this in China. Time goes slower there. Here we have to hurry, feed the hungry children before we're too old to work. I feel like a mother cat hunting for its kittens. She has to find them fast because in a few hours she will forget how to count or that she had any kittens at all. I can't sleep in this country because it doesn't shut down for the night. Factories, canneries, restaurants - always somebody somewhere working through the night. It never gets done all at once here. Time was different in China. One year lasted as long as my total time here; one evening so long, you could visit your women friends, drink tea, and play cards at each house, and it would still be twilight. It even got boring, nothing to do but fan ourselves. Here midnight comes and the floor's not swept, the ironing's not ready, the money's not made. I would be still young if we lived in China. (1983: 98) — Maxine Hong Kingston

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

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. — Maxine Hong Kingston

In America my mother has eyes as strong as boulders, never once skittering off a face, but she has not learned to place decorations and phonograph needles, nor has she stopped seeing land on the other side of the oceans. Now her eyes include the relatives in China, as they once included my father smiling and smiling in his many western outfits, a different one for each photograph that he sent from America. (1983: 59) — Maxine Hong Kingston

I'd like to go to New Society Village someday and find out exactly how far I can walk before people stop talking like me. — Maxine Hong Kingston

What does old look like? Sometimes I am wrinkled, sometimes not. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Attraction eludes control so stubbornly that whole societies designed to organize relationships among people cannot keep order, not even when they bind people to one another from childhood and raise them together. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Gods you avoid won't hurt you. — Maxine Hong Kingston

How unlike a dead fish a live fish is. — Maxine Hong Kingston

There's something in life that's a curtain, and I keep trying to raise it. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Perhaps women were once so dangerous they had to have their feet bound. — Maxine Hong Kingston

No husband of mine will say, "I could have been a drummer, but I had to think about the wife and kids. You know how it is." Nobody supports me at the expense of his own adventure. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Ocean people are different from land people. The ocean never stops saying and asking into ears, which don't sleep like eyes ... 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. — Maxine Hong Kingston

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. — Maxine Hong Kingston

What are you going to do for a living? Yea, you're going to have to work because you can't be a housewife. Somebody has to marry you before you can be a housewife. And you, you are a plant. Do you know that? That's all you are if you don't talk. If you don't talk, you can't have a personality. You'll have no personality and no hair. You've got to let people know you have a personality and a brain. You think somebody is going to take care of you all your stupid life? You think you'll always have your big sister? You think somebody's going to marry you, is that it? Well you're not the type that gets dates, let alone gets married. Nobody's going to notice you. And you have to talk for interviews, speak right up in front of the boss. Don't you know that? — Maxine Hong Kingston

It's the duty of artists to volunteer to do particle counting. Don't leave creation up to the accountants. — Maxine Hong Kingston

In a time of destruction, create something. — Maxine Hong Kingston

I've been writing since I was 7, but before that, I was orally making stories. — Maxine Hong Kingston

I do not believe in old age. I do not believe in getting tired. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Humans are basically good. That's why it takes so much training to march march march kill kill kill kill. — Maxine Hong Kingston

I was speaking well because I was talking to her; there are people who dry up language. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Be careful what you say. It comes true. It comes true. I had to leave home in order to see the world logically, logic the new way of seeing. I learned to think that mysteries are for explanation. I enjoy the simplicity. Concrete pours out of my mouth to cover the forests with freeways and sidewalks. Give me plastics, periodical tables, TV dinners with vegetables no more complex than peas mixed with diced carrots. Shine floodlights into dark corners: no ghosts. — Maxine Hong Kingston

The Chinese did not admire a bent back; goddesses and warriors stood straight. Still there must have been a marvelous freeing of beauty when a worker laid down her burden and stretched and arched. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Mothers who love their children take them along. — Maxine Hong Kingston

The Revolution put an end to prostitution by giving women what they wanted: a job and a room of their own. (1983: 61) — Maxine Hong Kingston

To write out the precepts again, we contend with them, and keep them; we build our humanity, and keep our humanity alive ... Thay has named the precepts 'wonderful' ... Wonderful because they can protect us, and show us how to live a joyous life, an interesting, adventurous, deep, large life, and how to be with one another, and with animals, plants, and all the Earth and universe. Wonderful because when we practice the precepts, we existentially become humane, we embody loving kindness ... Standing in the midst of burning ruins, I was glad that I knew the precepts. Though I kept their tenets imperfectly, even in aspiration I created some invisible good that could not be destroyed ... The Five Wonderful Precepts give clear and simple directions to finding that life. In devastation, I have blueprints for making home anew (90-92).
For a Future to Be Possible: Commentaries on the Five Wonderful Precepts — Maxine Hong Kingston

Chinese Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies? — Maxine Hong Kingston

I learned to shoot more accurately because my teachers held the targets. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Joy and life exist nowhere but the present. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Allen Ginsberg instructs: "First thought, best thought." Oh, to have my every spontaneous thought count as poetry! No draft after draft like a draft horse.
Clayton Eshleman, laughing, said, "'First thought best thought' is not 'First word best word ' Ginsberg does rewrite. I'm sure he does. — Maxine Hong Kingston

To shut the door at the end of the workday, which does not spill over into evening. To throw away books after reading them so theydon't have to be dusted. To go through boxes on New Year's Eve and throw out half of what is inside. Sometimes for extravagance to pick a bunch of flowers for the one table. Other women besides me must have this daydream about a carefree life. — Maxine Hong Kingston

And I had to get out of hating range. — 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

Reading Ngo Tu Lap's poems, terrible nostalgia wells up in me- nostalgia for a lost time and a far-gone country, nostalgia for people I've loved, and for creatures of forests and rivers. I feel gratitude too. War is over. Peace arrives with these beautiful poems. — Maxine Hong Kingston

I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes. — Maxine Hong Kingston

The swordswoman and I are not so dissimilar. May my people understand the resemblance soon so that I can return to them. What we have in common are the words at our backs. The idioms for revenge are 'report a crime' and 'report to five families.' The reporting is the vengeance-not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words. — Maxine Hong Kingston

A story can take you through a whole process of searching, seeking, confronting, through conflicts, and then to a resolution. As the storyteller and the listener, we go through a story together. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Adultery is extravagance. — 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

The villagers were speeding up the circling of events because she was too shortsighted to see that her infidelity had already harmed the village, the waves of consequences would return unpredictably, sometimes in disguise, as now, to hurt her. This roundness had to be made coin-sized so that she would see is circumference: punish her at the birth of her baby. Awaken her to the inexorable. People who refused fatalism because they could invent small resources insisted on culpability. Deny accidents and wrest fault from the stars. — Maxine Hong Kingston

My mother is not smiling; Chinese do not smile for photographs. Their faces command relatives in foreign lands - 'Send money' - and prosperity for ever - 'Put food in front of this picture.' My mother does not understand Chinese- American snapshots. 'What are you laughing at?' she asks. (1983: 58) — Maxine Hong Kingston

Ocean people are very different from land people. The ocean never stops saying and asking into ears, which don't sleep like eyes. — Maxine Hong Kingston

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 pared down like this before, when she had travelled up the mountains into rare snow - alone in white not unlike being alone in black. She had also sailed a boat safely between land and land. — Maxine Hong Kingston

The work of preservation demands that the feelings playing about in one's guts not be turned into action. Just watch their passing like cherry blossoms. — Maxine Hong Kingston