“There are a couple of poems I've written with masculine muses, very often the muse to me is a female.” Quote by Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“I'm not sure why my muse is female, except when I am deliberately playing against that figure.” FiguresFemaleNot SureMuse Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“When people say "the body," frequently they mean the literal body, the physical body.” PeopleMeanBodyLiteralPhysical Body Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“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.” DifferentBodyLevelsTalkingIssuesSonHusbandDemandFemaleMalesManifestationEmpoweringConcreteInvasionFemale Body Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“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.” WritingMayBookDifferentBodyFormChallengesGenerationsCreationProduceMalesDefenseContributionComponentsAppropriation Author: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 is the world of writing.” IfsKnowsWorldWritingSonHusbandSettingSettingsMuse Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“From the world of the muse and writing, there will come, hopefully, the book. You're right, for me, that the muse is always female, and the book comes from a separate gender dimension than the concrete male world that, as you pointed out, has been surrounding me since I was an infant.” WorldWritingHas BeensBookFemaleMalesGenderHopefullyDimensionsConcreteMuseInfant Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“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.” BodyPhysical Body Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“As I grew older - and even when I was younger - it had puzzled me why I continued and continue to be heterosexual.” GrewPuzzled Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“Heterosexuality - whichever gender you are - says that the other gender is very important to you.” ImportantGenderHeterosexuality Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim