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-… - Maxine Hong Kingston

The only way to get any work done-without polling everybody, as in a statistical study in sociology-is to give your own peculiar vision; because that's what's interesting, the way one person sees the world. It's up to other people to ask themselves whether they think like that or not. And if they don't think like you, that should be very exciting to them. They would read about something that they are completely unfamiliar with... I was just in Hong Kong and I loved seeing Chinese who were different from myself. To think of the possibility of another way of being Chinese or being a human being is much more exciting than to see someone just like me.

Those critics who do not explore why and how this book is different but merely point out its difference as a flaw have a very disturbing idea about the role of the writer. Why must I 'represent' anyone besides myself? Why should I be denied an individual artistic vision?

I think that feminist writers have been writing with power and pride, but I am suggesting that we have to invent new images and ways of power. So far the world thinks of power as violence, that power comes from a gun. We must create a new kind of drama in which there is drama, but it's nonviolent. And this has barely been thought of. (1990)