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How unlike a dead fish a live fish is.

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
Unlike
Fish
Fishes
Dead
Live

More quotes by Maxine Hong Kingston

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Humans are basically good. That's why it takes so much training to march march march kill kill kill kill.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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Hunger also changes the world - when eating can't be a habit, then neither can seeing.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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Adultery is extravagance.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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You must not tell anyone,' my mother said, 'what I am about to tell you.'
Maxine Hong Kingston
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Daughters-in-law lived with their husbands' parents, not their own a synonym for marriage in Chinese is taking a daughter-in-law.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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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.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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You're too young to decide to live forever.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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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.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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Any merchant who advertises 'Honest Scales' must have been thinking about weighing them.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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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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Joy and life exist nowhere but the present.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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You can't eat straight A's.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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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.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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The way I'm going now is to focus on peace, to create peace. As Sister Corita said, I don't go to anti-war rallies. I go to peace rallies.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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People who can comfort the dead can also chase after them to hurt them further-a reverse ancestor worship.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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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
Maxine Hong Kingston
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Do the right thing by whoever crosses your path. Those coincidental people are your people.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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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.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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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