A Quote by Maxine Hong Kingston

We seem to be always on cusps. Women come out of the burkah, the niqab, purdah, the closet, then go back in again. Of course, what we need do is to value the happy freedom of all beings.
Muslim women had to go out in purdah, that heavy sheet that covers even the eyes. Hindu women had to go out in the doli, a kind of closed sedan chair like a catafalque. My mother always told me about these things with bitterness and rage.
I wanted out of the spotlight, so I subtracted myself for a few years. I just tried to do a couple producing projects. Of course, the problem is, in getting out of the spotlight to feel safe and invisible again, I overcompensated and went too far into the darkness. And now I come back and go, "Wait, I didn't mean to go that invisible. Hey, come on, I'm here, I want my voice to be heard."
I think that the whole idea of ‘no regrets’ was always a silly idea to me, because of course I regret all the places I went wrong, but that’s what creating anything, and being human, is all about. Of course if I could go back and knew what I know now, I absolutely would do it differently, I’d do it the right way, but part of being human is that we can’t go back, we can only hope that if we come across that moment again, we’ll do it the right way.
I've been very lucky in the freedom that I've been given. Every artist needs two types of freedom: You need the freedom to - the freedom to come up with an idea or treatment - and then you need the other half of the freedom, and that's freedom from - somebody saying, 'This is great. This is how I want you to do it'.
I've been very lucky in the freedom that I've been given. Every artist needs two types of freedom: You need the freedom to - the freedom to come up with an idea or treatment - and then you need the other half of the freedom, and that's freedom from - somebody saying, 'This is great. This is how I want you to do it.'
I have to make about a million proofs of everything. I don’t know, it’s just a repetition, like a meditation. You come back to something and then you leave it, and then you come back again and you leave it, and each time it changes. And sometimes you have to wait for new information inside yourself to be able to finish something, to find out how it should go.
I'm convinced that sending people to Mars is so expensive that if you go once and bring the people back and then go again and bring the people back, we're eventually going to run out of money. But what if we send people the first time and they don't come back? What if they stay there?
I can't speak for other people, but for me, I feel like gone are the days that you need to come out of a closet. I never felt like I was in a closet. I never did. I always felt comfortable with who I am and the decisions I made.
In popular houses where visitors like to go again and again, there is always a happy combination of some attention on the part of the hostess and the perfect freedom of the guests to occupy their time as they choose.
When I announced on my Facebook page that I'm coming to Israel, people started telling me that I shouldn't go there, but I figured that if I'm not going to come here, then I guess I can't go back to the United States anymore and I can never go to Russia again and I should probably never go back to Germany and I should probably never go back to France and I should probably never go back to England....All I see here is a really beautiful city.
Again, although I'm not a particularly religious person, I go back to the religious left that I come out of: There are moral imperatives to fight back. As Daniel Berrigan says, "We're called to do the good." And then we have to let it go. It's not our job to know where the good goes.
I love the pigeons. I just raise them, period, and feed them. Pigeons go away, and they always come back. You get a touch of freedom, and then they are free to come back to you. I love the idea of pigeons.
Bill O'Reilly truly was always going to go to Italy when the scandal erupted about his secret settlements with women that accused him of harassment. So he decided to go on the vacation that he already scheduled, and then of course, he never came back.
When things aren't going well, I complain a lot and get depressed. I whine and I eat and I go to sleep. I do all kinds of things. And if I'm smart, I'll go and clean out a drawer or a closet or go and pay my bills. I do get myself into situations where I'm not happy with what's going on. But you just have to wait it out and have faith that that dry well will fill up again.
It's a risk-reward thing. If I do go out and try and play and get hurt again, then I'm definitely out. I've got no chance to go. If I'm ready, then great. It's getting better. I've been doing a lot more in the last couple of days. I've got a day off (on Wednesday) and then hope to come back in on Thursday and really see where I am at and test it out. Hopefully I'm going to play this weekend but, in reality, we'll see.
I go through periods where I don't shop at all, and then I go crazy and buy everything in sight. I never know what to wear, and I'm at my worst before an audition. I pull everything out of the closet, throw it on my bed. I'll get entirely dressed and then take it all off again until I'm in a kind of frenzy.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!