Kaysen Kingston Quotes

When these pictures burst, the stars drew yet further apart. Black space opened. She got to her feet to fight better ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

King Kofi Kingston, that does have a nice ring to it. But not so much the initials, though. ~ CM Punk

It's the duty of artists to volunteer to do particle counting. Don't leave creation up to the accountants. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

Let my life as Poet begin. I want the life of the Poet. I have labored for over twelve years, one thousand pages of prose. Now, I want the easiness of poetry. The brevity of the poem. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

As you release the things you no longer love or use, you call back to yourself the parts of your spirit that have been attached to them, and attached to the emotional needs and memories associated with those objects. In so doing, you bring yourself powerfully into present time. Your energy, instead of being dispersed in a thousand different, unproductive directions, becomes more centered and focused. You feel more spiritually complete and more at peace with yourself. ~ Karen Kingston

I make sure I always surround myself with good, down to earth, fun, real people, who always keep me grounded. ~ Sean Kingston

Reality was getting too dense. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Not everything has a happy ending, and not everything has an ending. Some things just kind of dribble away or cut off abruptly. ~ Susanna Kaysen

You can't eat straight A's. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

Asa's smell (the fragrance of a beautiful man) is what I miss the most.
[…]
Like a virus his smell entered me and changed my cells,
slowly, over years, until they craved only that smell, which was their oxygen. ~ Susanna Kaysen

I believe I can steal Fairfax's reputation in six months. It is an empty edifice. It has collapsed. ~ Margo Kingston

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. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

And this was the main precondition, that anything might be something else. Once I'd accepted that, it followed that I might be mad, or that someone might think me mad. How could I say for certain that I wasn't, if I couldn't say for certain that a curtain wasn't a mountain range? ~ Susanna Kaysen

I think a lot of actors need validation. If you see truly amazing actors perform, they expose themselves to such an incredible degree. You can really see their pain. ~ Alex Kingston

I'm Ambivalent. In fact that's my new favorite word.
Do you know what it means ?
I don't care. ~ Susanna Kaysen

And I had to get out of hating range. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

He sighed. 'Your life is your own,Miss Kingston. We have only one. Don't allow anyone else to dictate to you what you should do with yours.'
She blinked and frowned as if she didn't understand what he meant.
'It's yours,' he advised softly. 'Don't waste it on petty conventions or conformity. Swim against the tide if you want to. ~ Val Wood

The Chinese did not admire a bent back; goddesses and warriors stood straight. Still there must have been a marvelous freeing of beauty when a worker laid down her burden and stretched and arched. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

My attention determines the depth and quality of my experience. ~ Karen 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's a mean world," she'd say. She was usually glad enough to be back. "There's nobody to take care of you out there. ~ Susanna Kaysen

I wasn't convinced I was crazy, though I feared I was. Some people say that having any conscious opinion on the matter is a mark of sanity, but I'm not sure that's true. I still think about it. I'll always have to think about it. ~ Susanna Kaysen

I am not a nurse escorting six lunatics to the ice cream parlor. ~ Susanna Kaysen

As I write, Kim Beazley has the numbers and the game looks over. ~ Margo Kingston

Upon Good Earth, lay the body down,
open the mouth wide, let song rush through. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

It was my misfortune-or salvation-to be at all times perfectly conscious of my misperceptions of reality. ~ Susanna Kaysen

There is a certain element of complementarity between men and women that is biological by nature. ~ Jack Kingston

Probably all babies, having recently been nothing, have a tenuous hold on life. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

Be careful what you say. It comes true. It comes true. I had to leave home in order to see the world logically, logic the new way of seeing. I learned to think that mysteries are for explanation. I enjoy the simplicity. Concrete pours out of my mouth to cover the forests with freeways and sidewalks. Give me plastics, periodical tables, TV dinners with vegetables no more complex than peas mixed with diced carrots. Shine floodlights into dark corners: no ghosts. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

We were made to get along, to be together, and
it's a truth that's medically attested... Love and dance and connection strengthen every bodily system, while isolation, rage and sadness poison them with cortisol. ~ Steven Heighton

The floor of ice cream parlor bothered me. It was black-and-white checkboard tile, bigger than supermarket checkboard. If I looked only at a white square, I would be all right, but it was hard to ignore the black squares that surrounded the white ones. The contrast got under my skin. The floor meant yes, no, this, that, up, down, day, night -all the indecisions and opposites that were bad enough in life without having them spelled out for you on the floor. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Twenty aspirin, a little slit alongside the veins of the arm, maybe even a bad half hour standing on a roof: We've all had those. And somewhat more dangerous things, like putting a gun in your mouth. But you put it there, you taste it, it's cold and greasy, your finger is on the trigger, and you find that a whole world lies between this moment and the moment you've been planning, when you'll pull the trigger. That world defeats you. You put the gun back in the drawer. You'll have to find another way. ~ Susanna Kaysen

When I was in high school in the '50s you were supposed to be an Elvis Presley, a James Dean, a Marlon Brando or a Kingston Trio type in a button-down shirt headed for the fraternities at Stanford or Cal. ~ Robert Hass

You must not tell anyone,' my mother said, 'what I am about to tell you.' ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

And there was huge numbers of UFOs around my parents home in Kingston. ~ Betty Hill