I'm nomadic. Even when I'm a visiting professor here at the City University of Hong Kong, in this campus flat, I'm constantly getting up, sitting down, picking this or that up. You can't do that and be a writer. You need to be able to sit still.

I don't really get into the power sufficiently, and that's also a problem for me.

I feel compassionate, because I know [students] all have to go down this road of suffering and it's going to be tough.

I was nine when I first knew I wanted to be a writer, in particular, a poet.

Just because suddenly you have a sabbatical doesn't mean that the writing occasion comes to you.

Even after the mothering dropped because my son grew up, the writing - the muse - was always the third wheel, the lowest on the priority list.

According to [Maxine Hong] Kingston, the prose writer is "a workhorse."