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Quote by Shirley Geok-lin Lim

“No matter how sheltered [my students] are, no matter how their parents try to do right by them, every single one of them, you know, every single one of us, that's what we all face. And so it's made me - that's the one change I've marked in myself - it's made me change in the way I relate to my students. I've become a different teacher in that way.”

Quote by Shirley Geok-lin Lim

Author

Shirley Geok-lin Lim

Shirley Geok-lin Lim is a Singaporean-born writer known for her profound insights into multiculturalism and her rich literary works. Her writings often focus on themes of race, gender, and identity, which have resonated with readers worldwide. more

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“In publishing books and winning awards, it's like you've enjoyed this meal, you know, two months ago. How long can you be nourished by thinking about it? You've already ingested it, and you've excreted it, and that was two months ago. You had this fabulous meal. It's not going to keep you satiated today. You have to go out and get your next meal. For me, that's writing. I have to go out and hunt my next meal.”

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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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“I want, I want, I want! We never grow out of it somehow. Unless we become Buddhists, maybe.”

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“I was nine when I first knew I wanted to be a writer, in particular, a poet.”

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“In actual fact, I have been an academic - a college and university teacher and scholar - for much of the last 45 years, and only rarely a writer.”

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“When I spoke at the 2012 Contemporary Women Writers' Conference in Taipei, I thought it offered an appropriate moment and site to announce my new manifesto10 and profession - to be a writer.”

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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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“Some Asian American male scholars have claimed this muse to be Guong Goong, God of Literature, and, simultaneously, although not coincidentally or triflingly, God of War, but I did not have such a gendered muse in mind then.”

Mind War Literature Males Scholar Muse Asian Asian American God Of War

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“My recent retirement from full-time teaching to the status of research professor at University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB) encouraged me to come out, so to speak.”

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“The inimitable writer Maxine Hong Kingston published a book in 2002 with the title To Be the Poet. However, in contrast to the transformatory distinctions Kingston makes between the conditions of being a prose writer and "the poet," my multigenre impulses incline me to a broader transformation: to be a writer.”

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Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim