Maxine Hong Kingston Quotes

I don't want to regurgitate. Writing should be constantly an act of creation and going forward into the new.

I've spent too many years carrying writing as if it were a burden that's only mine. I want to tell everybody, and young people too, that there are many things that we must do in community. I wish I had started sooner.

I have this motto which is, Pay attention and tell the truth. And in telling the truth, sometimes you tell it fictionally, sometimes you tell it nonfictionally.

The way I've looked at it is that I want to write about myself and other people in the truest way possible. To write a true autobiography or biography, I have to know what the other person dreams and how her imagination works. I am less interested in dates and facts.

I do believe that our lives and our art go together. Who I am and what I write are the same...I feel that the writing process doesn't just begin when you are putting words on paper. It begins in the living that you do before, and I feel powerful enough now so that I can set up my daily living circumstances in order to support me and support my art.

If we imagine characters, can we cause them to appear in the real world? What if I could strongly write peace, I can cause an end to war.

All during the Vietnam War, I could feel there was a darkness hanging over the whole world and it lasted for so long.

what I wanted to do was... I was going to write against the minimalist novel in order to write a global novel. The reason I was thinking of a global novel was that I began to notice that every city that I went to anywhere in the world is a cosmopolitan city. You come to Beijing, London, anywhere, and you are surrounded by people from all over the world. Every country has had its diaspora and everybody is going everywhere, and so in order to write a story about any city, any American city or any other city, you have to be able to write characters from every cultural background. A story of a city is also the story of all the people on the entire planet.

I think that individual voices are not as strong as a community of voices. If we can make a community of voices, then we can speak more truth. Also in a community, we learn to listen…

Writing is an act of nonviolence, but it’s very active, very aggressive, but you’re not setting off bombs or guns. Just using the pen. It’s like shouting and getting your voice heard and the range is worldwide. You might not be able to stop a war right now, but the words can go out and influence the atmosphere and the world, way into the future.

Remember when the narrator is bullying the other girl? She says to her, “Just say ‘ow.’ Just say anything, just make a sound.” I guess that’s the first step: make a sound. I think for everybody that just being able to speak up is a bravery, which they have to learn. But for a writer, it’s to be able to find a style and a rhythm and a structure to be able to tell a story. I think that is another way of finding voice, and it’s not that easy….

When I was writing The Woman Warrior, I felt that I was writing something completely different; that nothing like it had ever been written. So I thought if I couldn’t get it published, I would just keep copies and it would really be okay if it was published after I die or if somebody discovered it 100 years from now, 1,000 years from now. I’m always thinking about people reading it someday — and that will be alright.

war is utter destructive violent chaos. There is no "art," no "order(s)," no "just war." No matter what the ideologies, wars are the same. (sonshi)

I see these soldiers, people coming back from the wars, and they are so wounded. They are so hurt from what they have experienced and the actions which they have made in the world. And now there is work to be done in pulling our country together and the world together. That's the work that comes after a war. It's how to make peace and how to make the world whole again. (2007)

I feel that it's part of my work as an artist, a creator, a human being, is to integrate and to be more inclusive and to define American as large and not as exclusive. (2007)