41 quotes
Before we can leave our parents, they stuff our heads like the suitcases which they jam-pack with homemade underwear. (p87)
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976)
I don't want anybody attached to me forever with gratitude. (p85)
China Men (1980)
The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed. It is much more graceful to appear favored by the gods. (p64)
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976)
I don't want to regurgitate. Writing should be constantly an act of creation and going forward into the new.
Linda wrote in her Ph.D. dissertation: "Vietnam duty provided the most unambiguous source of antiwar sentiment." War causes peace. (p227)
The Fifth Book of Peace (2003)
He repeated himself so often that some of what he said seeped into the ears. (p190)
China Men (1980)
Whatever there is when there isn't war has to be invented. What do people do in peace? Peace has barely been thought. (p306)
Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989)
There is a refusal to understand that an American can look like one of us and doesn't have to be white. (1989)
collected in Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston (1977)
If we imagine characters, can we cause them to appear in the real world? What if I could strongly write peace, I can cause an end to war.
Leaning with his back against the door, he could hear this voice, then that one. All was silent but for one voice at a time telling a life. (p214)
The Fifth Book of Peace (2003)
"We're all under the same sky and walk the same earth; we're alive together during the same moment." (Brave Orchid, p154, "At the Western Palace")
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976)
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. (p61)
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976)
I think that individual voices are not as strong as a community of voices. If we can make a community of voices, then we can speak more truth. Also in a community, we learn to listen…
Los Angeles Review of Books (2016)
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. (Epilogue)
The Fifth Book of Peace (2003)
He did too have a philosophy of life: Do the right thing by whoever crosses your path. Those coincidental people are your people. (p223)
Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989)
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. (p159, "At the Western Palace")
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976)
"You must not tell anyone," my mother said, "what I am about to tell you." (First line, "No Name Woman")
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976)
I feel that everyone has a blurred area, which is a border between their imagination and what actually happens, and I am very interested in that border.
Fancy lovers never last. (p81)
China Men (1980)
These struggles have got to result in happy endings for all, and the readers must learn not to worship tragedy as the highest art any more. (1990)
collected in Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston (1977)