Shirley Geok-lin Lim

For a while they wore suits or pants suits, and pants suits are kind of a women's appropriation of male costume, work…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

I was writing poems as I was walking. I was able to take that restlessness, that nomadic distraction, and use that distraction…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

If the act of writing is the act of putting aside the masculine, then you might in that way, it may sound…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

I came to realize this weird projection: you are much more passionate about hating something outside of you when you know that…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

John Milton famously claimed, "Fame is the spur" for the poet, and indeed when we consider the six years he spent writing…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

[Irony] has everything to do with what Tillie Olsen so powerfully imagined in her short story, "As I Stand Here Ironing" and…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

I only submit the poems I think are the strongest.

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

In that way, I don't understand myself. It might have to do with my own conflicts, where to place my body as…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

In various memoir pieces, I have traced the trajectory of yearning through decisions made, good and bad, that had somehow kept the…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

Wouldn't that be wonderful if I could do that? And that way, I could walk with the muse, rather than walk without…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

I had to do the academic writing. At a top research university, publishing of a certain kind is very important. So your…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

This distraction is what one wants, which is very, very bad for the muse, because the muse hates not being in the…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

I was not - even the notion of "could not" seems to suggest a moment of recognition, but it was such a…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

As I grew older - and even when I was younger - it had puzzled me why I continued and continue to…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

I do not think a similar goal, to attain fame, drove me when I was a child and young woman.

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

After Fifty Shades of Grey, I think my writing is pretty tame, isn't it?

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

It is true that my characters have sex.

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

The consciousness of one's physical self had to be repressed because, socially, the female body was so visible, an ongoing provocation and…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

As the only girl growing up for a long time with only boys, as you pointed out, it seems like I was…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

At a certain point, the struggles with teaching and mothering and so on and so forth, those decline, those lessen.

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

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

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

I guess my writing through time has focused on a number of dimensions that reflect separately on the meaning and social place…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

Saul Bellow has that character in Henderson the Rain King say: "I want, I want, I want!"9 I remember reading this passage…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

Poetry has roots, and sometimes they are aerial. Sometimes they are buried.

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

Agency over one's sexual self - and the articulation of that kind of agency - might seem transgressive to readers who don't…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim