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 biograph… - Maxine Hong Kingston

While I love young people, I like to talk to people my own age. I feel very lucky when we get together and there are middle-aged people and they still have their art, their writing, their acting. That's exciting. Like there is still life and the business of time and taking that away from them has not stopped them from being youthful.

As a child I feared the size of the world. The farther away the sound of howling dogs, the farther away the sound of the trains, the tighter I curled myself under the quilt. The trains sounded deeper and deeper into the night. They had not reached the end of the world before I stopped hearing them, the last long moan diminishing toward China. How large the world must be to make my grandmother only a taste by the time she reaches me. (p99)

I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes. (p29)