Maxine Com Quotes & Sayings

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

[To the editor of the Harlan, Kentucky, Daily Enterprise, as a kindergartener:] I know everything that goes on in this town, and if you give me a job so will you. — Maxine Cheshire

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

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

All I'm looking for is a guy who'll do what I want, when I want, for as long as I want, and then go away. Or wait nearby, like a Dust Buster, charged up and ready when needed. — Maxine

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

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

What can an outsider know, except/the shell of things? — Maxine Kumin

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

So many poems you go into and come up empty. — Maxine Kumin

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

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

Poetry
makes nothing happen.
It survives
in the valley of its saying. — Maxine Kumin

The thing that's depressing is teaching graduate students today and discovering that they don't know simple elemental facts of grammar. They really do not know how to scan a line; they've never been taught to scan a line. Many of them don't know the difference between 'lie' and 'lay,' let alone 'its' and 'it's.' And they're in graduate school! — Maxine Kumin

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

I don't think of color, I think that anyone wants a master of their skill and be successful knows no color. — Maxine Powell

Maxine," Grant said, but I barely heard him. I was lost in that vision, in those emotions - the pain, and hunger for pain, forming the root of so much
agonized rage.
" 'Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate,'" I muttered.
"Yoda, from Star Wars?"
" 'Hate leads to suffering.'" I met his gaze. "Yoda knows his shit, man."
Grant's mouth crooked in a gentle smile. — Marjorie M. Liu

In Harlan, Kentucky, we told stories the way some people play music ... In the mountains, storytelling is truly an art form, and as much recreation as communication. — Maxine Cheshire

You don't need as much as some of the other artists but you do sing with your eyes close and it gives the illusion that you singing in your sleep and number one places around the country, you have to have your eyes open. You can close your eyes for a certain gesture or whatever but your eyes are the mirrors of your soul ... — Maxine Powell

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

And the heart gets watered and recovers itself. There is hope, everywhere there is hope. — Maxine Swann

Life will do anything for a living. — Maxine Kumin

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

Leeky Shortz says "Live life like your arse is on fire! — Maxine Mansfield

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

There is an extraordinary degree of amity among Washington poets. They hang together. You would be hard pressed to find that in Manhattan. — Maxine Kumin

The only way to keep a secret in Washington, if you are the one person who knows it, is never to tell another living soul. — Maxine Cheshire