Quote

Long ago in China, knot-makers tied string into buttons and frogs, and rope into bell pulls. There was one knot so complicated that it blinded the knot-maker. Finally an emperor outlawed this cruel knot, and the nobles could not order it anymore. If I had lived in China, I would have been an outlaw knot-maker.

Maxine Hong Kingston

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Maxine Hong Kingston
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: October 27
Author
Novelist
Professor
Writer
Chinatown
Stockton
Maxine Ting Ting Hong
Pulls
Finally
Rope
Knots
Anymore
Buttons
Blinded
China
Bells
Lived
Makers
Frogs
Nobles
Order
Cruel
Bell
Outlawed
Long
Strings
Maker
Knot
Would
Tied
Emperor
Outlaw
Complicated
String

More quotes by Maxine Hong Kingston

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Attraction eludes control so stubbornly that whole societies designed to organize relationships among people cannot keep order, not even when they bind people to one another from childhood and raise them together.
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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.
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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.
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Ocean people are very different from land people. The ocean never stops saying and asking into ears, which don't sleep like eyes.
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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.
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And I had to get out of hating range.
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The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed. It is much more graceful to appear favored by the gods.
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You must not tell anyone,' my mother said, 'what I am about to tell you.'
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I may be ugly and clumsy, but one thing I'm not, I'm not retarded.
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People who can comfort the dead can also chase after them to hurt them further-a reverse ancestor worship.
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Humans are basically good. That's why it takes so much training to march march march kill kill kill kill.
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Adultery is extravagance.
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I do not believe in old age. I do not believe in getting tired.
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