Maxine Quotes

I’ll tell you the secret to good teaching: make possible an experience without predetermining what that experience will be.

Imagination is the capacity to think of things as if they could be otherwise.

After a good night sleep, I wake up the next day, and I say, 'Come on, Tea Party, let’s get it on.'

The only way to keep a secret in Washington, if you are the one person who knows it, is never to tell another living soul.

In Harlan, Kentucky, we told stories the way some people play music. ... In the mountains, storytelling is truly an art form, and as much recreation as communication.

There's something in life that's a curtain, and I keep trying to raise it.

I do not believe in old age. I do not believe in getting tired.

I am confirmed in my belief that war is utter destructive violent chaos. There is no "art," no "order(s)," no "just war." No matter what the ideologies, wars are the same.

It seems that writing chose me. I feel that because I know history, and I know the history of so many cultures; I have lived a large life.

My job is my own only land.

When I am composing, I try to clear my mind of having to publish, or having to sell a book or find readers. That kind of thinking gets in the way.

I'm so proud that my offspring became a musician. I'm full of awe that we are able to have a whole family live the life of artists.

...I've learned exactly who the enemy are. I easily recognize them-business-suited in their modern American executive guise, each boss two feet taller than I am and impossible to meet eye to eye.

Ocean people are very different from land people. The ocean never stops saying and asking into ears, which don't sleep like eyes.

I'd like to go to New Society Village someday and find out exactly how far I can walk before people stop talking like me.

The way I'm going now is to focus on peace, to create peace. As Sister Corita said, "I don't go to anti-war rallies. I go to peace rallies."

Any merchant who advertises 'Honest Scales' must have been thinking about weighing them.

And I had to get out of hating range.

What does old look like? Sometimes I am wrinkled, sometimes not.

Gods you avoid won't hurt you.

No husband of mine will say, "I could have been a drummer, but I had to think about the wife and kids. You know how it is." Nobody supports me at the expense of his own adventure.

When you raise girls, you're raising children for strangers.

The time on either side of now stands fast.

And the pond's stillness nippled as if by rain instead is pocked with life.

To build is to dwell.

Can it be I am the only Jew residing in Danville, Kentuchy, looking for matzoh in the Safeway and the A & P?

Meanwhile let us cast one shadow in air and water.

So let's see what they [Republicans] are going to do. If they're going to put together great programs, and everybody understands that they're good.

Romance is everything to turn it into a cause for given is priceless

Perhaps women were once so dangerous they had to have their feet bound.

When forces of nature are involved, fate gets all the blame.

Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America.

If you stay ready, there's no need to get ready when an opportunity presents itself.

Having an achievement mindset is your competitive advantage

Allen Ginsberg instructs: "First thought, best thought." Oh, to have my every spontaneous thought count as poetry! No draft after draft like a draft

To me success means effectiveness in the world that I am able to carry my ideas and values into the world-that I am able to change it in positive ways.

That's my prescription for a happy marriage - marry someone who doesn't do anything similar to what you do.