What's crazy is the idea that revolutionaries must shoot and bomb and kill, that revolution is the same as war. (p305) - Maxine Hong Kingston

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)

From the fairy tales, I've learned exactly who the enemy are. I easily recognize them-business-suited in their modern American executive guise, each boss two feet taller than I am and impossible to meet eye to eye. (p48)

Community is not built once-and-for-all; people have to imagine, practice, and re-create it. (p306)