Joy and life exist nowhere but the present. - Maxine Hong Kingston

what I want is to give people questions (which I think are very creative things) and then when people wrestle with them and struggle with them in their own minds and in their own lives, all kinds of exciting things happen to them. I don't want people to throw the responsibility back to me. (1990)

(about visiting China for the first time) MHK: I did feel that I was going back to a place that I had never been. (1986)

When I write I also claim America in a literary way, in an artistic way. When people claim countries, it's usually thought of as conquering them in war. I'm claiming America in a pacifist way, in an artistic way.