The Fourth Book of Peace, the book I was working on — 156 good, rewritten pages that burned in the fire — was fiction. I was making up characters who use peace tactics. It had to be fiction, because Peace has to be supposed, imagined, divined, dreamed. Peace's language, its sounds and rhythms, when read aloud, when read silently, should pacify breath and tongue, makes ears and brain be tranquil. I'd gotten to the place in my narrative where a Hawaiian woman appears and gives a prayer for humanity.
— Maxine Hong Kingston, The Fifth Book of Peace