To make my waking life American-normal, I turn on the lights before anything untoward makes an appearance. I push the deformed into my dreams, which … - Maxine Hong Kingston

Before we can leave our parents, they stuff our heads like the suitcases which they jam-pack with homemade underwear. (p87)

For fiction, we fantasize about what we would like to happen: I am making what I would like to happen happen. And so, this writing always feels new and going forward. If there is such a thing as reverse memory, maybe that's what I am getting into; because it seems to me, I'm writing the memory of the future rather than a memory of the past. (1986)

I want English professors to put my books on regular reading lists. An American writer. We have worked hard for fairness in the job market and housing and schooling, and our art should not be segregated out. Readers ought not to have boring preconceptions of what a story is about just because its author is "ethnic." "Ethnic writer" and "feminist writer" have been used dismissively.

I think that individual voices are not as strong as a community of voices. If we can make a community of voices, then we can speak more truth. Also in a community, we learn to listen…