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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hunger also changes the world - when eating can't be a habit, then neither can seeing.

What does old look like? Sometimes I am wrinkled, sometimes not.

I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for contradictions.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

In a time of destruction, create something.

In a time of destruction, create something: a poem, a parade, a community, a school, a vow, a moral principle; one peaceful moment.

...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.