Taking a deep breathe, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life. I walked away.
I do want to do the entire alphabet. There's in [Walker's Alphabet] a poem called "A Life" in that grouping. I was going to change that title to "A. "
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.
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.
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.
When someone asks me now, "What do you do?" I will be able to say, "I am a 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.
No amount of reading or memorizing will make you successful in life. It is the understanding and application of wise thought which counts.
If you try to make music and try to convey to everyone that everything is all peachy-keen, you might come off like you're full of it, and that could be something that draws listeners away.
A stroke is a very difficult thing. You get depressed. . . . What I found was this: the cure for depression is to think of others, to do for others. You can always find something to be grateful for.
Wag the world how it will, Leaves must be green in Spring.