Maxine Hong Kingston
Writer
1940-10-27
Quotes by Maxine Hong Kingston
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Perhaps women were once so dangerous they had to have their feet bound.
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Ocean people are different from land people. The ocean never stops saying and asking into ears, which don't sleep like eyes. Those who live by the sea examine the driftwood and glass balls that float from foreign ships. They let scores of invisible imps loose out of found bottles. In a scoop of salt water, they revive the dead blobs that have been beached in storms and tides: fins, whiskers, and gills unfold; mouths, eyes, and colors bloom and spread. Sometimes ocean people are given to understand the newness and oldness of the world; then all morning they try to keep that boundless joy like a little sun inside their chests. The ocean also makes its people know immensity.
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The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed. It is much more graceful to appear favored by the gods.
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It must be that people who read go on more macrocosmic and microcosmic trips – biblical god trips, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake trips. Non-readers, what do they get? (They get the munchies.)
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This is the most important thing about me--I'm a card-carrying reader. All I really want to do is sit and read or lie down and read or eat and read or shit and read. I'm a trained reader. I want a job where I get paid for reading books. And I don't have to make reports on what I read or to apply what I read.
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In a time of destruction, create something.
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It must be that people who read go on more macrocosmic and microcosmic trips – biblical god trips, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake trips. Non-readers, what do they get? (They get the munchies.)
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In a time of destruction, create something.
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This is the most important thing about me--I'm a card-carrying reader. All I really want to do is sit and read or lie down and read or eat and read or shit and read. I'm a trained reader. I want a job where I get paid for reading books. And I don't have to make reports on what I read or to apply what I read.
Read quote -
Ocean people are different from land people. The ocean never stops saying and asking into ears, which don't sleep like eyes. Those who live by the sea examine the driftwood and glass balls that float from foreign ships. They let scores of invisible imps loose out of found bottles. In a scoop of salt water, they revive the dead blobs that have been beached in storms and tides: fins, whiskers, and gills unfold; mouths, eyes, and colors bloom and spread. Sometimes ocean people are given to understand the newness and oldness of the world; then all morning they try to keep that boundless joy like a little sun inside their chests. The ocean also makes its people know immensity.
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The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed. It is much more graceful to appear favored by the gods.
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Perhaps women were once so dangerous they had to have their feet bound.
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The difference between mad people and sane people... is that sane people have variety when they talk-story. Mad people have only one story that they talk over and over.
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Chinese Women looked like great sea snails- the corded wood, babies, and laundry they carried were the whorls on their backs.
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People who can comfort the dead can also chase after them to hurt them further-a reverse ancestor worship.
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Every word that falls from the mouth is a coin lost. Silently. They gave and accepted food with both hands.
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To be envious, in Chinese, is 'to guzzle vinegar'.
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Hunger also changes the world-when eating can't be a habit, then neither can seeing.
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Daughters-in-law lived with their husbands' parents, not their own; a synonym for marriage in Chinese is taking a daughter-in-law.
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Ocean people are very different from land people. The ocean never stops saying and asking into ears, which don't sleep like eyes.
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