The power of imagination leads us to what's real... it's a bridge toward reality. (1986) - Maxine Hong Kingston

Joy and life exist nowhere but the present.

I want to write about something you can't find in research. Research can only, oh, I guess, confirm some of the small details, like what kinds of clothes these people wore and you can see the big historical things that happened. But what I want to say, I can't find through research. There's a feeling that I have, or there are feelings, the way people are in certain circumstances. I feel that it comes from the heightened moments in all our lives when we are really aware of what it feels like to be a person or what life is all about. You don't feel it too often, but every once in awhile you feel it. I want to put that feeling into writing or I want to write words so that when somebody reads it, they can have that feeling. And all the details are only components to get to this feeling. It's sort of a heightened awareness so that you know what it means to be human.

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.