The problem of the female body is not something that I've studied, but my memoir does treat that theme.

[Irony] has everything to do with what Tillie Olsen so powerfully imagined in her short story, "As I Stand Here Ironing" and elaborates on polemically in her 1978 book, Silences, in a chapter first delivered as a talk in 1967. As Olsen clearly saw it for women, my not being a writer was a material consequence of my being a woman - a wife, mother, housewife, and a certain kind of feminist teacher - attentive, one-on-one, face-to-face, nurturing, the kind who receives high ESCI evaluation scores from undergraduates and graduate students.

In short, for me - I'm kind of projecting onto you - distraction has become a modus vivendi, a way of life. Rather than complaining, I am recognizing that I couldn't do what I wanted to do because I'm distracted.

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

I can't imagine otherwise - I guess Virginia Woolf could write wonderful novels where the women never have sex, and her novels work. But for me, I don't think I could write a plot without sex happening somewhere.

The crows that are predatory are something you have to deal with. For me, they also become associated with cancer cells.