Maxine Hong Kingston said this quote

In a time of destruction, create something.

~ Maxine Hong Kingston

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.

~ Maxine Hong Kingston

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.)

~ Maxine Hong Kingston

The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed. It is much more graceful to appear favored by the gods.

~ Maxine Hong Kingston