Quotes by Maxine Hong Kingston

About Maxine Hong Kingston:

Maxine Hong Kingston is a Chinese American author and Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a BA in English in 1962. Kingston has written three novels and several works of non-fiction about the experiences of Chinese immigrants living in the United States.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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 h...

Maxine Hong Kingston

It must be that people who read go on more macrocosmic and microcosmic trips – biblical god trips, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Ulysses, Finnegan’s Wake trips. Non-readers, what do they get? (They get the munchies.)

Maxine Hong Kingston

You can't eat straight A's.

Maxine Hong Kingston

You're too young to decide to live forever.

Maxine Hong Kingston

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.

Maxine Hong Kingston

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

Maxine Hong Kingston

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

Maxine Hong Kingston

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

Maxine Hong Kingston

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

Maxine Hong 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

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

Maxine Hong 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

In a time of destruction, create something.

Maxine Hong Kingston

Perhaps women were once so dangerous they had to have their feet bound.

Maxine Hong Kingston

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.

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

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.

Maxine Hong Kingston

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.

Maxine Hong Kingston

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

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

Maxine Hong Kingston

Author Bio

  • NameMaxine Hong Kingston
  • DescriptionChinese American author
  • BornOctober 27, 1940
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionProfessor; Writer; Novelist
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship; National Book Award; National Humanities Medal