Maxine Hong Kingston Quotes

I feel in my own life I've made many mistakes. I've failed in many directions.

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

Your present is shaped by your yesterday, but you don't have to advertise it.

Just do what you do. Sometimes you do well, and sometimes you do wrong, but you have to just be able to deal with yourself and move forward.

There are a few things that I regret, but nothing that I need to forget.

By honestly acknowledging your past errors, but never damning yourself for them, you can learn to use your past for your own future benefit.

I don't look back with any bitterness, though there are a couple of judgment calls and some '80s hairdos that I'd like to do over.

I think it's a very healthy thing to learn from what's happened in the past. But only if you look at what happened and think, 'How could I have dealt with that differently?' Then let it go.

You've got to let it go and say it was the best I could do at that time and place in my life. You hope that the thing you're doing next is a little bit better.

My biggest regret is rolling in regret. It is best to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move on.

I'm growing up and continuing to learn from my mistakes and trying not to make the same ones over and over again, but am I going to live in a shell, or am I just going to hide from everybody and not do anything? I don't think that's the way I should live my life, and I'm not going to do it.

I too have my own demons, and I have struggled. I've made my own mistakes, and I'm not proud of them.

As seemingly impossible as it may seem of having zero regrets, when I look at my life now and all the mistakes I've made, all the bad decisions I've made, all the things I could have done differently or done more in, I don't think I would have changed anything.

Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them.

I don't want to return to the past. I don't yearn for when I was 18 years old. I was in high school then. I had acne. I had a terrible hairdo. I'm sure I was sporting polyester pants.

Apologizes are pointless, regrets come too late. What matters is you can move, on you can grow.

As I have got older, I have become easier on myself. It's about realising things can't be perfect.

You can't start changing things in your past. Everyone has challenges and lessons to learn - we wouldn't be who we are without them. I certainly wouldn't be who I am.

When you invoke the agent of change called acceptance, you must accept all that you are, all that you've been, and all that you will be in the future.

I don't have to try to be perfect at everything.

Forgive yourself for your faults and your mistakes and move on.

There have to be more important things going on in the world than my past.

I make mistakes. I say stupid things. I do idiotic things. And, quite frankly, I'm proud of them. Why not make mistakes?

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

Don't be so hard on yourself. Be a little harder on yourself. Learn from your experiences. Don't dwell on things. Get on with your life.