When I'm teaching, I tell my students: It's all process. Don't even think of product.
Maxine Hong KingstonRead
There can't be a pure myth, especially when the myth has been handed down in the oral tradition. As the stories are told, they change. If the stories don't change they just die.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Myths evolve over time as they are shared, reflecting the dynamic nature of storytelling.
Maxine Hong Kingston's quote suggests that myths are not static but rather living narratives that change with each telling. Oral traditions breathe life into stories, and their continual evolution is essential for their survival; without change, these stories would simply fade away and be forgotten.
Themes
MythOral TraditionStorytellingChangeNarrative
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the importance of preserving cultural heritage, you might reference this quote to emphasize how myths adapt over time.
More from Maxine Hong Kingston
All quotes →In a time of destruction, create something.
Maxine Hong KingstonRead
Joy and life exist nowhere but the present.
Maxine Hong KingstonRead
We're all under the same sky and walk the same earth; we're alive together during the same moment.
Maxine Hong KingstonRead
I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.
Maxine Hong KingstonRead
The work of preservation demands that the feelings playing about in one's guts not be turned into action. Just watch their passing like cherry blossoms.
Maxine Hong KingstonRead
Similar quotes
I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.
Edgar Allan PoeRead
Life is very, very simple and easy to understand, but we complicate it with the beliefs and ideas that we create.
Miguel Angel RuizRead
thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.
William BlakeRead
He that has doctrinal knowledge and speculation only, without affection, never is engaged in the business of religion.
Jonathan EdwardsRead
Anti-Semitism is a horrible disease from which nobody is immune, and it has a kind of evil fascination that makes an enlightened person draw near the source of infection, supposedly in a scientific spirit, but really to sniff the vapors and dally with the possibility.
Mary MccarthyRead
How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?
Katherine MansfieldRead