Kingston Quotes & Sayings

Having been in Hollywood as a shadow, as someone who is almost invisible, I can see fame for what it is. — Alex Kingston

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

Through fire, through ice, through deepest despair, never lose your stride. — Hayden Pearton

Even when I was at school, I wanted to be liked by everyone, even the bullies. I didn't like them, but I needed to know that they liked me. — Alex Kingston

Kingston is so chill. He goes with me everywhere. He's been to every studio in L.A., New York, London. He lives up to his name-total Rasta boy. He gives me a real balance. You can go 100 miles an hour, but you still have to stop to hang out with him. — Gwen Stefani

My attention determines the depth and quality of my experience. — Karen Kingston

The Children's Health Insurance Program has given Democrats a wide-open door for socialized medicine. The door was left open by Republicans, who were in the majority when we passed the original legislation in 1997. — Jack Kingston

This is the time to pull together as a Nation, as different people from all over the States with different perspectives and different social statuses and different income brackets, to unify into one and help those on the ground who need our help the most. — Jack 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

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

Number one on my top five is Beyonce. — Sean Kingston

I didn't have any qualms. I'm used to taking my clothes off in front of strangers. I've done it since I was 14 - with my mother's adult education art classes. She liked to paint and I went along as a life model. — Alex Kingston

Our current identification system is so disjointed that the World Trade Center terrorists had a total of 63 valid driver's licenses between them. — Jack 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

One of my sisters is physically and mentally handicapped. She took a lot of my parents' attention, so I grew up in my own world, playing in my room for hours and hours. — Alex Kingston

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

As you release the things you no longer love or use, you call back to yourself the parts of your spirit that have been attached to them, and attached to the emotional needs and memories associated with those objects. In so doing, you bring yourself powerfully into present time. Your energy, instead of being dispersed in a thousand different, unproductive directions, becomes more centered and focused. You feel more spiritually complete and more at peace with yourself. — Karen Kingston

You're too young to decide to live forever. — 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

Since the Kingstonfirst BID started in January 2005, retailers have enjoyed three years of impressive sales growth, which has taken many of us to the top of our peer group. The BID period has also seen Kingston rise to 12th place according to Experian, and 13th place according to the Javelin Venuescore, in their respective retail super leagues of UK town and city centres. I am confident the platform that our BID provides will allow us to continue to maintain Kingston as the place that people love to shop and visit. — David Barford

The other important thing to understand is that as humans we see only a segment of reality in the greater cosmic scheme of things, so we are really never in a position to judge anyone or anything. — Karen Kingston

Think twice before you buy. Decide before you purchase anything where you are going to keep it and what you are going to use it for. If your answers to either of these questions are vague, then you are about to purchase clutter. Desist from buying. — Karen Kingston

When you live surrounded by clutter, it is impossible to have clarity about what you are doing in your life. — Karen Kingston

Never underestimate the effect of clutter on your life. — Karen 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

Abbott is a good man to fix up messes and make new policy work ... If he gets it right - and Howard will back him with big bucks - Abbott could clean-up his image and restore his appeal as a future leader. — Margo 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

I grew up twelve miles outside of Montego Bay. In my early teens, I went to Kingston. It was like a different planet for me. In the country, people are kind. In the city, people are hard an' cold, like the concrete and steel. — Jimmy Cliff

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

Mothers who love their children take them along. — 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

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

Marriage encourages the men and women who together create life to unite in a bond for the protection of children. — Jack Kingston

I was raised with opera and very white-bread folk music like The Kingston Trio. That was about as daring as it got. So when I discovered hip-hop as a teenager, at first it made no sense to me at all. — Jess Row

There is no singular meaning of wife. That is the point. That is its meaning. To see the wife fully through a multi-faceted lens is one of the central challenges facing society in the twenty-first century. To do this, new scripts are required that employ wife as a verb and as a gender-neutral concept. These are essential if we are to create necessary new narratives, new ways of living as women and men together. — Anne Kingston

There's a reason why the story of the ghetto should never come with a photo. The Third World slum is a nightmare that defies beliefs or facts, even the ones staring right at you. A vision of hell that twists and turns on itself and grooves to its own soundtrack. Normal rules do not apply here. Imagination then, dream, fantasy. You visit a ghetto, particularly a ghetto in West Kingston, and it immediately leaves the real to become this sort of grotesque, something out of Dante or the infernal painting of Hieronymus Bosch. It's a rusty red chamber of hell that cannot be described so I will not try to describe it. It cannot be photographed because some parts of West Kingston, such as Rema, are in the grip of such bleak and unremitting repulsiveness that the inherent beauty of the photographic process will lie to you about just how ugly it really is. — Marlon James

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I had to get out of hating range. — Maxine Hong Kingston

In those sticky summer nights in South London our windows stay open and our tiny apartment becomes our secret garden. The magic of the secret garden is that it exists in our imagination. There are no limits, no borderlines. The secret garden leads to the marigolds of Mogadishu and the magnolias of Kingston and when the heat turns us sticky and sweet and unwilling to be claimed by defeat we own the night. We own our bodies. We own our lives. — Diriye Osman

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

Marriage is sacred and protected and has nothing to do with violating our civil rights. — Jack Kingston

In England, 'Doctor Who' has always been considered a children's show, at least by children. — Alex Kingston

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

Indeed, there are so many prejudices against everyday middle-class values on college campuses, and serving in the military and being pro-American just seems to be one of them. — Jack Kingston

To the Hesitating Purchaser:
If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
If schooners, islands, and maroons
And Buccaneers and buried Gold
And all the old romance, retold,
Exactly in the ancient way,
Can please, as me they pleased of old,
The wiser youngsters of to-day:
-So be it, and fall on! If not,
If studious youth no longer crave,
His ancient appetites forgot,
Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
So be it, also! And may I
And all my pirates share the grave,
Where these and their creations lie! — Robert Louis Stevenson

Clutter is stuck energy. The word "clutter" derives from the Middle English word "clotter," which means to coagulate - and that's about as stuck as you can get. — Karen Kingston

I see the calm and hear the calm and know the calm can't last. Not for me, not for him, not for Kingston, not for Jamaica. For — Marlon James

I was actually born in deep rural Jamaica and came to Kingston as a high school girl. — Portia Simpson-Miller

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

I love playing strong feisty women, I really do, but if you were to ask my husband he'd probably say that I'm very insecure. And actually incredibly malleable, which isn't necessarily a good thing. — Alex Kingston

I think Social Security should be bipartisan and it should transcend the next election, and you should get the best ideas of the Democrats and of the Republicans, and move forward with the best. — Jack Kingston

I describe me sound as international: reggae, pop, rap, R&B all in one. I think I have my own style. I can't really even describe it. People say, "What type of genre is your music?" It's Sean Kingston genre. I have my own genre. No disrespect to no artist or dudes out there. I feel like I am my own person. I am doing my own thing. — Sean Kingston

I think if you live in London, it's such a cosmopolitan city; nobody even notices different-race relationships. I assumed it would be even more liberal in the States, and it's totally the opposite. — Alex Kingston

If Australia is attacked, it's no longer terrorism. We have invaded Iraq. Iraq, or its new allies, have every right to attack back. — Margo 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

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

He turns to me and blinks. "You need to go to Kingston and I need the feathers of a snowy owl." He says it so plainly, so flat, like we're speaking about pizza toppings. — Anonymous

Because every man who fight monster become a monster too, and there be at least one woman in Kingston who think me is the killer of all things name hope. — Marlon James

Abdicating-Decision-Making — Karen Kingston

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

What I would ask the Democrat Party is to put your plan on the table, because most people agree with the facts, and the facts are that Social Security is running out of money. — Jack Kingston

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

What are the stars telling you?" I asked.
Max pushed up on his elbows and pretended to strain his ear toward the sky. "They say...They say...you're allowed to forgive yourself."
I rolled sideways...and he did the same.
"For what?" I asked.
"Living."
"I'm not very good at that," I admitted.
"Well, you kissed someone without flinching. Maybe you're getting better."
"Maybe it's just you."
He didn't argue. — Courtney C. Stevens

I got my deal off MySpace. I wrote to J.R. Rotem. He is big producer. He's done a lot of stuff for Rihanna, 50 Cent, Britney Spears and etc. I thought, "Yo, this guy is really talented I want to work with him." Once I sent him message he didn't reply back. I kept on sending the messages. I kept on hitting him back like eight times a day. He eventually replied back like, "Yo, I want to hear more music." — Sean Kingston

I go back five generations in Jamaica. My dad grew up in Port Royal, and my mom grew up in Kingston. My family is from the country like West Moreland and also in Manchester. I've been there countless times. As far as cuisine, there's not really much that comes out of Jamaica that's on a plate that I don't like. — Dule Hill

It's not just the lawlessness. It's the grabbing of a myth and making it theirs, like a reggae singer dropping new lyrics 'pon di old version. And if a western needs an O.K. Corral, an O.K. Corral needs a Dodge City. Kingston, where bodies sometimes drop like flies, fits the description a little too well. — Marlon James

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

Frivolous lawsuits are booming in this county. The U.S. has more costs of litigation per person than any other industrialized nation in the world, and it is crippling our economy. — Jack Kingston

The reason why clutter clearing is effective is that while you are putting your external world in order there are corresponding changes going on internally too. — Karen Kingston

But whether a couple is a man and a woman has everything to do with the meaning of marriage. — Jack 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

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

In Ethiopia, democracy is in its infancy and it must be nurtured along by its leaders. — Jack Kingston

I think people think celebrities get babies really easily, like Angelina Jolie, but they don't hear about the ones who aren't successful because we don't like talking about it, it's too painful. — Alex Kingston

Marriage is an institution fits in perfect harmony with the laws of nature; whereas systems of slavery and segregation were designed to brutally oppress people and thereby violated the laws of nature. — Jack 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

Simon Crean has painstakingly built a platform for a potentially devastating assault on Howard's fitness for office. — Margo Kingston

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

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

On each side of the war against war, hopes soar, hopes dive, hour by hour now. Resignations abound, timetables slip, and the world waits, mesmerised. I'm off to Melbourne to record an arts chat show. — Margo 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

Anything you want to know about Kingston's green versus orange war, everything you ever need to know about the rudeboy-cum-gunman is not in Bob Marley's lyrics or in Peter Tosh's but in Marty Robbins's "Big Iron." He's — Marlon James

I was born in St. Andrew's and raised in Kingston then I attended the Alpha Boy's school. — Desmond Dekker

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

When I was about 13 or 14. I was in a Kingston Trio type group. We evolved into the New Breed. Our first song on the radio was "Green Eyed Woman," not to be confused with "Green Eyed Lady". — Timothy B. Schmit

My goal is just to get healthy as far as what my ideal weight has to be for my height. — Sean Kingston

So many people have the TV or radio constantly turned on "for company," or spend their time reading trashy novels, aimlessly surfing the Net, and so on. Then suddenly one day you are old or sick and you realize you have done nothing with your life. All your thoughts are other people's thoughts and you have no idea who you really are or what the purpose of your life might be. — Karen Kingston

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

It's wrong for women to be constantly shy and embarrassed about their bodies. There are so many images of unattainable beauty that are so destructive. It's important to show how your body really is. As the cliche has it, beauty comes from within. — Alex Kingston