When I came here, I was a young mother. I was pregnant with my second one. My husband was looking for jobs. We were young teachers in Malaysia, but we were not happy with what we were doing, so we moved. Singapore welcomed me completely.

I love Singapore, partly because the PAP has made it an ideal place for a bodoh—a dumb person like myself who doesn’t know how to drive, who loves cleanliness. I love the orderliness.

My [1994] articles infuriated [the government], I didn’t realize that this is still a Confucianist society where you never criticize your leaders.

My fear was that there would be a lawsuit coming, and I would be bankrupted. But if I write something, I seldom retract. You think carefully about what you write, and then it is there, and you defend it, and you’re responsible for it.

I’m not a rabble rouser. I refuse to go to Speaker’s Corner. I’m not an activist. I don’t punch my fist in the air. I’m an armchair commentator, but that is a role I’m quite happy with.

Some journalists hardly know Singapore, but they sail in, write a few provocative articles and then they go out. I think the real criticism comes from the people inside. I see myself as an important voice, because we don’t have many voices. And some of the voices, people don’t care to listen to—when they become too vitriolic, screaming and screeching.

I like talking to young people. They contact me through the web. I want to influence them to be urbane, measured. If you’re a political commentator, you think through, you don’t let your emotions get the better of you. I’m not advising them to join the Workers Party. I’m not partisan.

As a Chinese woman and a Catholic and a civil servant, I was suppressed by three structures—Four! Confucianism.

Systematically I broke out of all three: I got divorced, I walked out of my religion, I walked out of the civil service, and I’ve been happy ever since.

My mother always said, “Don’t do this, don’t do that. Don’t try to be too clever, or no man will marry you.” Then I got married to a very conventional man, a good man, but absolutely clear about his role.

I was brought up by nuns. They represented a different culture that to me seemed superior to my Hokkien culture. When I was 15, I converted to the Catholic religion, which is the most oppressive religion.

I’m a very late riser. I love being alone. I couldn’t bear to live with anybody.

I’m very conscious about my health. I keep telling women, “I love the intellectual life, but please, please, please, the two most important things, my dears, are your health and your financial independence. If you don’t have these two, you’re finished in this world.”

I’m on the Internet for hours. I love new knowledge. It’s knowledge for itself, which is a luxury. When I was younger, I studied because the knowledge was useful for something—to pass exams, for example.

I google for info like, “Do animals commit suicide?” I even google, “Do animals have orgasms?”

I want to be alive for the next 50 years, just to know the answers to all these questions: dark matter, dark energy, those strange things called neutrinos, the origin of life, the origin of consciousness.

Male company is wonderful—the fun part of it, going on holidays together, the physical side of it. But I realized in the end that my freedom and time on my own override all this. But I still go on dates, and would you believe it? All my dates are younger than me!

I talk too much about myself. I have to check myself and say, “Oh Catherine Lim, don’t be so self promotional.”

I see people who are frightened by death, disease, uncertainty, and I want to be in charge. I want dignity. I also have a very low pain threshold. And I’m very proud of my mind. Once my mind goes, that’s it.

I’ve researched an [assisted dying] organization in Switzerland called Dignitas, and this is what I’ll do. I’ll go with dignity and and joy, because I’ll go back to the cosmos. They say matter is indestructible.

I don’t care for the Catholic heaven, where you have the corrupt popes. I don’t want to spend eternity with them.

At this stage in my life, I’ve never been happier, and it spills into my work as a writer, as a commentator, as a person, as a woman, as a mother.