These commonplace categories - wife, mother, housewife, teacher - are in fact teleological referents. They gesture to profound … - Shirley Geok-lin Lim

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If He put tribulation before you and said He will give you patience by giving you a little trouble along the way, wouldn't you take a little trouble? You say, 'Lord, I want all my highways paved. ' the Lord says, 'I'm sorry, I can't accommodate you. I'm going to let you run over some bumps occasionally, so you will have patience. ' You do not like the bumps, but you like the patience, and if you want the patience, you will have to take the bumps. And what is patience but experience?

Shirley Geok-lin Lim

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.

Color, Mother, Saturate, Teacher, Teleological

Same Author Quotes

That desire to reach further is also where I ended my memoir, in 1994 in California, perhaps ironically, looking out to the Pacific and back to Asia, toward the not-yet-written.

Asia, California, Desire, Looking, Perhaps

Sometimes, in my published complaints about not being a writer, I have recalled the prospect - the yearning to be a writer - as it first formed for me.

Firsts, Prospect, Published, Recalled, Sometimes, Yearning

When someone asks me now, "What do you do?" I will be able to say, "I am a writer. "

Able, Ask Me, Asks, Say, Writer

Even my novels offer passages in which the major character is imagined as a writer. In Joss and Gold, Li An is a business writer who edits her company's weekly public relations magazine. And in Sister Swing, Suyin writes human interest stories for a free, local community paper, The Asian Time.

Character, Gold, Local, Swings, Weekly, Writing

Particularly in relationship to my father - there's something that daughters, girl children, do almost instinctually in their relationships with their father, so that physically, those boundaries must be respected and never crossed.

Boundaries, Children, Daughter, Girl, Particularly, Relationship