Maxine Hong Kingston Quotes

Do I have to explain why 'exotic' pisses me off, and 'not exotic' pisses me off? They've got us in a bag, which we aren't punching our way out of. To be exotic or to be not-exotic is not a question about Americans or about humans. Okay, okay. Take me, for example. I'm common ordinary. Plain black sweater. Blue jeans. Tennis shoes ordinaire. Clean soo mun shaven. What's so exotic? My hair's too long, huh? Is that it? It's the hair? (p308)

They think that Americans are either white or Black. I can't wear that civil-rights button with the Black hand and the white hand shaking each other. I have a nightmare-after duking it out, someday Blacks and whites will shake hands over my head. I'm the little yellow man beneath the bridge of their hands and overlooked. (p307)

Community is not built once-and-for-all; people have to imagine, practice, and re-create it. (p306)

Whatever there is when there isn't war has to be invented. What do people do in peace? Peace has barely been thought. (p306)

What's crazy is the idea that revolutionaries must shoot and bomb and kill, that revolution is the same as war. (p305)

He spent the rest of the night looking for the plot of our ever-branching lives. A job can't be the plot of life, and not a soapy love-marriage-divorce--and hell no, not Viet Nam. (p288)

She's lived for a long time, and in many places. Lucky to have her here now. (p268)

He did too have a philosophy of life: Do the right thing by whoever crosses your path. Those coincidental people are your people. (p223)

The lights of the city on hills make a vertical shimmer from sky straight into the water, like a backdrop, like a dream. (p37)

Maybe it comes from living in San Francisco, city of clammy humors and foghorns that warn and warn-omen, o-o-men, o dolorous omen, o dolors of omens-and not enough sun, but Wittman Ah Sing considered suicide every day. Entertained it. (first lines)

Linda wrote in her Ph.D. dissertation: "Vietnam duty provided the most unambiguous source of antiwar sentiment." War causes peace. (p227)

Leaning with his back against the door, he could hear this voice, then that one. All was silent but for one voice at a time telling a life. (p214)

In the whole dark universe, I've met you at this bit of fire, and we speak with each other, and listen to each other. All of life and the war led up to this present time of being here with you. (p209)

The wind is time blowing by. (p189)

When the peace demonstrations turned violent, and doves and hawks were using the same tactics-revolutionary and governmental provocateurs infiltrating parades and vigils, Governor Ray Gun ordering the National Guard and helicopters to tear-gas and shoot up People's Park and Berkeley (they killed James Rector, and blinded an artist)-Wittman Ah Sing and Taña made up their minds to leave America. (first lines)