I'm much more comfortable in pants and shirts, running around. There was a typical construction about womanhood when I was growing up that I rejected.

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

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.

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

The one difference I have noted is that it's made me more tender to my students and to young people particularly. It's made me mellower. I began to have a different perspective, because I may not be around much longer to be hassled by life's pressures.

Poetics is a science for stammering poets.

My brothers were my peers, but they were not the preeminent male figures in my emotional life.