This distraction is what one wants, which is very, very bad for the muse, because the muse hates not being in the line of sight. It's no longer an external conflict, like, oh, I have all these demands and I don't like them. The split is in the self. This may explain why, when I was in Santa Barbara before I went to Singapore and then now to Hong Kong, there was a writing moment when I was writing a poem a day. I had never done that before.

[My muse] she's impatient with me, because I don't do what I should do: sit down and write.

I guess my writing through time has focused on a number of dimensions that reflect separately on the meaning and social place of the female body.

Quite a while ago, I made a conscious choice to place my teaching first, so it was very ego-invested. That decision wasn't a good thing in some ways.

In some ways it is absurd for me to assert, counter to evidence, that I have not been writing.

With so many brothers, I could always find a pair of shorts to borrow and run around in.

Of course, among the confused motives that spurred me toward being a writer was also the desire to look, to be above the trees and rooftops, beyond the Malaysian horizon that circumscribed my life.