The highlight of my childhood was making my brother laugh so hard that food came out of his nose.
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.
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.
You wish to be great, begin from the least. You are thinking to construct some mighty fabric in height; first think of the foundation of humility. And how great soever a mass of building one may wish and design to place above it, the greater the building is to be, the deeper does he dig his foundation.
Heavy petting, that was fun! That was good. And frankly, you know I wish kids would go back to it. It's very satisfying. And it's not as scary. So many girls, you know this. I mean they are having what we call sex. Right? They're having intercourse. They don't want to, they don't get anything out of it.
I think if you don't have it [desire], you're not going to be pushed into anything. You've got to want to do something.
I always think challenges are interesting and help you to become a better person.