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I'm not sure why my muse is female, except when I am deliberately playing against that figure.

Shirley Geok-lin Lim

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Shirley Geok-lin Lim
Age: 79
Born: 1944
Born: December 27
Journalist
Literary Critic
Writer
Malacca City
Figures
Except
Playing
Sure
Deliberately
Muse
Figure
Female

More quotes by Shirley Geok-lin Lim

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The poem might come to you as you're preparing to teach a lecture, right? And when you say, no to that occasion, that poem is gone.
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The Chinese traditionally have revered age and longevity - I have one and hope for the other! - so, in Taipei, a city-hub for global Chinese who dis-identify with the People's Republic of China's construction of a Communist nationalist Chineseness, I called on the Chinese muse of writing to witness my emergence out of the academic woods.
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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.
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I have a muse who's very powerful, but I'm still a hopeless deadbeat of a poet.
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I'm surrounded by men, and the muse is complaining that I have neglected her.
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This condition [irony] has nothing to do with writer's block, a psychological syndrome, which is one of the few I have not diagnosed for myself!
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Breath and brevity are sisters the long-winded is an enemy who muffles your heartbeat.
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The body in defense against male appropriation expresses itself through work in writing, and the work in writing produces the book. So it's a different form of creation and generation that may be viewed as creation without male contribution as a component or challenge.
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In a way, this kind of insight or recognition often permeates the way I think of character, how I plot action, and the way in which I use imagery, seeing binaries as false.
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What happens when a female writer invokes a female muse? Does something else happen? With Sappho's figures of desire, we have a different lesbian energy.
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I don't really get into the power sufficiently, and that's also a problem for me.
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Note, the reply will not be I write, an act that I have, after all, been performing since I was nine.
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I have some weak poems in that new collection, which is why I'm not ready to send the collection out yet.
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If I could write a novel while I'm walking, I probably would.
Shirley Geok-lin Lim
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My muse is very often, in my mind, a nagger. She nags me.
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I'm in my 60s, and a cancer scare just makes you more aware of mortality.
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The problem of the female body is not something that I've studied, but my memoir does treat that theme.
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In various memoir pieces, I have traced the trajectory of yearning through decisions made, good and bad, that had somehow kept the ambition on track.
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After Fifty Shades of Grey, I think my writing is pretty tame, isn't it?
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Saul Bellow has that character in Henderson the Rain King say: I want, I want, I want!9 I remember reading this passage years ago and thinking, yes, that's the human.
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