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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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Maxine Hong Kingston
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: October 27
Author
Novelist
Professor
Writer
Chinatown
Stockton
Maxine Ting Ting Hong
Seems
Many
Feel
Chose
Feels
Cultures
Writing
Large
Life
Lived
History
Culture

More quotes by Maxine Hong Kingston

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I do not believe in old age. I do not believe in getting tired.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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You're too young to decide to live forever.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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Gods you avoid won't hurt you.
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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You can't eat straight A's.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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And I had to get out of hating range.
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
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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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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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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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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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Perhaps women were once so dangerous that they had to have their feet bound
Maxine Hong Kingston
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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
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My job is my own only land.
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 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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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.
Maxine Hong Kingston
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We're all under the same sky and walk the same earth we're alive together during the same moment.
Maxine Hong Kingston