One arrives at a recognition that one needs to be distracted.

Philosophy is a bad master for poetry; religion worse; and politics self-serving will never serve the Muse.

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.

The crows live in the world like you do. They are part of nature.

Even my novels offer passages in which the major character is imagined as a writer. In Joss and Gold, Li An is a business writer who edits her company's weekly public relations magazine. And in Sister Swing, Suyin writes human interest stories for a free, local community paper, The Asian Time.

I want, I want, I want! We never grow out of it somehow. Unless we become Buddhists, maybe.

It's as if I'm setting aside the husband and son, you know, the patriarchal world, for the world of the muse. This is the world of writing.