Shirley Geok-lin Lim quotes
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“As a first-generation "Asian American woman," for one thing, I knew there was no such thing as an "Asian American woman." Within this homogenizing labeling of an exotica, I knew there were entire racial/national/cultural/sexual-preferenced groups, many of whom find each other as alien as mainstream America apparently finds me.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin Lim -
“Writing a poem is unwriting a knot, like untying a shoelace that is clubbing your foot.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Interview with Pauline T. Newton, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“Poetry has roots, but they are sometimes cut off and still poetry is written.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“Poetry must speak of others, in order to speak for the poet's imagination, in order to speak of itself; it is slowed down by poetics after its flight is over.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“The foot can march or it can dance, but it cannot stand still until end-stopped.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Interview with Pauline T. Newton, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“If I could write a novel while I'm walking, I probably would.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“Working women went through a time when they believed that.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“The things that I dislike passionately, I have come to realize, are also part of me.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“As I grew older - and even when I was younger - it had puzzled me why I continued and continue to be heterosexual.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“Heterosexuality - whichever gender you are - says that the other gender is very important to you.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“Once you stop talking about the female body empowering itself vis-à-vis male forays or invasions or male demands or the necessity to respond to husband and son to bring the issue down to a more concrete level, the body is a different manifestation physically.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“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.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“At a certain point, the struggles with teaching and mothering and so on and so forth, those decline, those lessen.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“Agency over one's sexual self - and the articulation of that kind of agency - might seem transgressive to readers who don't expect it in a woman's text.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“I'm in my 60s, and a cancer scare just makes you more aware of mortality.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“Poetics is a science for stammering poets.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“People called me a tomboy. That was the term used then. I was very much someone who was comfortable in male clothing, and even later when I grew up, I was constantly wearing dungarees, wearing guy shirts.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“These commonplace categories - wife, mother, housewife, teacher - are in fact teleological referents. They gesture to profound states of being that animate, absorb and saturate the subject, like indelible dyes spilled repeatedly over a plain fabric. No matter if the fabric is sturdy or delicate, translucent or opaque, those dyes will stain. They will color the days and years and life.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“[My muse] she's impatient with me, because I don't do what I should do: sit down and write.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : Source: www.oxfordjournals.org
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“In the same way, the people whom I most abhor, I abhor them for elements that I abhor in myself.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“The poem is not a physical body. It's a textual body that has life only insofar as it can act symbolically. It cannot physically act.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : Source: www.oxfordjournals.org
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“The problem of the female body is not something that I've studied, but my memoir does treat that theme.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin LimSource : "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.
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“I had to do the academic writing. At a top research university, publishing of a certain kind is very important. So your friend is right. You can't do three things well.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin Lim -
“I really felt neurotic - it was a neurotic reason - but I had to teach very, very well. That sucked up a lot of oxygen from my time and my creative thinking.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin Lim -
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“One should be able to teach adequately and feel good about it.”
-- Shirley Geok-lin Lim
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