Maxine Hong Kingston

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

He did too have a philosophy of life: Do the right thing by whoever crosses your path. Those coincidental people are your people. (p223)

Whatever there is when there isn't war has to be invented. What do people do in peace? Peace has barely been thought. (p306)

In the whole dark universe, I've met you at this bit of fire, and we speak with each other, and listen to each other. All of life and the war led up to this present time of being here with you. (p209)

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

The wind is time blowing by. (p189)

He spent the rest of the night looking for the plot of our ever-branching lives. A job can't be the plot of life, and not a soapy love-marriage-divorce--and hell no, not Viet Nam. (p288)

If a woman is going to write a Book of Peace, it is given her to know devastation. ("Fire" opening line)