I was driven, as have been many writers, both by a repulsion of the childhood home's narrow confines and a desire to reach further, to keep desiring more of a future not yet imagined and not yet written down.

The Chinese traditionally have revered age and longevity - I have one and hope for the other! - so, in Taipei, a city-hub for global Chinese who dis-identify with the People's Republic of China's construction of a Communist nationalist Chineseness, I called on the Chinese muse of writing to witness my emergence out of the academic woods.

I had a couple of Asian readers and other folks tell me, "Oh, you have a lot of sex in your writing."

If you've been in a symbolic struggle long enough, even when the struggle is over, you don't know it's over.

I'm not sure why my muse is female, except when I am deliberately playing against that figure.

If the act of writing is the act of putting aside the masculine, then you might in that way, it may sound almost crazy to say this, say that the act of writing, for a woman, could be a homosexual act.

I'm always resisting [my muse]. I'm resisting her power.