
“I write songs about things that I'm simultaneously trying to not think about.”
As quoted in "My Lunch with Warren Zevon" by David Bowman,Salon.com (17 March 2000)
Friend of My Youth (2017)
“I write songs about things that I'm simultaneously trying to not think about.”
As quoted in "My Lunch with Warren Zevon" by David Bowman,Salon.com (17 March 2000)
SALON Interview (1995)
Context: I've long thought about how life is influenced by death, how it influences what you believe in and what you look for. Yes, I think I was pushed in a way to write this book by certain spirits — the yin people — in my life. They've always been there, I wouldn't say to help, but to kick me in the ass to write.... Yin people is the term Kwan uses, because "ghosts" is politically incorrect. People have such terrible assumptions about ghosts — you know, phantoms that haunt you, that make you scared, that turn the house upside down. Yin people are not in our living presence but are around, and kind of guide you to insights. Like in Las Vegas when the bells go off, telling you you've hit the jackpot. Yin people ring the bells, saying, "Pay attention." And you say, "Oh, I see now." Yet I'm a fairly skeptical person. I'm educated, I'm reasonably sane, and I know that this subject is fodder for ridicule.... To write the book, I had to put that aside. As with any book. I go through the anxiety, "What will people think of me for writing something like this?" But ultimately, I have to write what I have to write about, including the question of life continuing beyond our ordinary senses.
Source: "Happier Than Ever" · Official video at YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GJWxDKyk3A · Performance on Saturday Night Live (12 December 2021) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPfW6mGx1SA
On why she revisits certain themes in “AN INTERVIEW WITH CELESTE NG, THE 2018 INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE DAY AMBASSADOR” https://bookriot.com/2018/04/27/celeste-ng-interview/ in BookRiot (2018 Apr 27)
"Literature Nobel Awarded to Writer Doris Lessing" http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15195588 All Things Considered NPR (11 October 2007)
Interview to Rolling Stone (2010)
Sourced quotes
Source: [2010, August, M.I.A. Radical Chic, Rolling Stone]
Letter to his brother Jeff, from Hawaii (7 April 1941); p. 11
To Reach Eternity (1989)