Amy Tan Quotes

So sad! This is the saddest part when you lose someone you love- that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost?

We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that's like saying you can never change your fate.

I now lived in an invisible place made of my own dwindling breath, and because no one else could see it, they could not yank me out of it.

I am an American, steeped in American values. But I know on an emotional level what it means to be of the Chinese culture.

in a crowd of Caucasians, two Chinese people are already like family

Yesterday my daughter said to me, 'My marriage is falling apart.'
And now all she can do is watch it falling.

Lack of clarity is a writer's truth.

When a husband stops paying attention to the garden, he's thinking of pulling up roots.

We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable.
-Suyuan

But I don't have anything left inside of me to figure out where I fit in or what I want. If I want anything, it's to know what's possible to want.

Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.

Ying-ying, you have tiger eyes. They gather fire in the day. At night they shine golden.

When you already believe something, how can you suddenly stop? When you are a loyal friend, how can you no longer be one?

God, life changes faster than you think.

You can't stay in the dark for too long. Something inside you starts to fade, and you become like a starving person, crazy-hungry for light.

Forever did not mean what it once had. Forever was what changed inevitably over time.

I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?

Hardships can harden even the best person.

For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.

bad, how likely is it to come

The Doppler Effect of Communication": There is always distortion between what a speaker says and what a listener wants it to mean. "The

My mother didn't teach me lessons about being Chinese as strongly as she did the notion of who I was as a female.

But I was no longer sacared. I could see what was inside me. -Lindo

Why do you think you are missing something you never had?

When the anesthesia of love wears off,
you suffer the pain of consequence.

Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?

And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every direction.

Fate changes when you change your clothes.

I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.

I can never remember things I didn't understand in the first place.

You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.

Chaos is the penance for leisure.

In [writing] fiction, every sentence is its own reward.

I won't be what I'm not.
-Jing-mei

Why does love end so quickly and hatred last without end?

I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.

I have always known a thing before it happens.

In this matter, you should not concern yourself for my sake.

And all that talk about the breakup being good for us- who am I trying to fool? I'm cut loose, untethered, not belonging to anything or anybody.

After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?

Fate once made you American. Fate took it away.

The life we receive is not always what we choose.

I started a second novel seven times and I had to throw them away.

In the years that followed, I failed her so many times, each time asserting my own will, my right to fall short of expectations.

The moving cliff gave us the feeling we had to look behind us to know what lay ahead.

Kiss, a pat on the rump, and a deep inhalation of my scent, as if he and I were dogs.

Our meeting each other could not possibly be as random as two leaves from two trees being blown together.

We translated each other's meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more.

vampire hours of rest between dawn and noon.

I would still like to have that luxury, to be able to just sit and draw for hours and hours and hours. In a way, that's what I do as a writer.

back as a mud-smashing

my room, and to rub his scent off me.

Or maybe he would turn to religion. Many Americans did so when faced with heartache and hardship.

Everyone must dream. We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that's like saying you can never change your fate. Isn't that true?

Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.

After a while, I hurt so much I didn't feel any difference.

Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else's joy.

People there only dream that it is China, because if you are Chinese you can never let go of China in your mind.

A little knowledge withheld is a great advantage one should store for future use.

you showed me who I truly am. You did not remove my doubts. You forced me to see how I waver.

But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better.
-Jing-mei

I'm not saying fate happens without blame. but when fate turns out well, everyone should forget the bad road that got us here.

Our love would be solace, companionship, and the mending of wounds.

I think we often write because we feel a loneliness, and people read for the same reason, and then they come away feeling a little less lonely.

With each passing day, I didn't lose hope. I fought to have more.

But it was the love of a ghost. Arms that encircled but did not touch. A bowl full of rice but without my appetite to eat it. No hunger. No fullness.

Never show a weapon before you have to use it

A painting was a translation of the language of my heart.

When you touch a man's nostalgia, he is yours.

Auntie Yang is not hard of hearing. She is hard of listening.

Being able to restrain my emotions isn't a great victory - it's the pitiful proof of lost love.

I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.

And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.

I resented the easy supposition of all's well that ends well.

But how can anyone truly understand another's suffering unless he has felt the wound being made and the moment trust died?

We listened patiently to Lester, words skittering out of his mouth like cartoon dogs on fresh-waxed linoleum, frantically going nowhere.

Can you imagine how it is, to want to be neither inside nor outside, to want to be nowhere and disappear?

I want us to love each other so deeply we ache with the fullness of it.

Believe me, daughter, there is nothing worse than having your own family member out for revenge.

I hated the tests the raised hopes and failed expectations. - Two Kinds

Your only shame is to have shame.

The things one had to do in life sometimes had nothing to do with what was fun or convenient.

I like to go somewhere where I learn something I didn't know before, like the Dry Tortugas between Florida and Cuba.

What was worse, we asked among ourselves, to sit and wait for our own deaths with proper somber faces? Or to choose our own happiness?

To come so far, to lose so much and to find nothing.
-Jing-mei

A moment is not the same as time.

Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.

The most perfect replica of the most perfect woman in all eternity.

Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this. Everyone else want best quality. You thinking different.

It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.

If you are greedy, what is inside you is what makes you always hungry.

I was returning with myself whole and unbroken - limbs, mind, and spirit. I had discarded pride, that useless burden of self-importance

How can I argue with someone who makes no sense?

just like my mother, and if I

Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.

Why do some memories live only on your tongue or in your nose? Why do others always stay in your heart?

You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.

But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.
-Ying Ying

I imagine a hundred Chinese Icaruses, molding wings out of earwax. You can't stop people from wishing.

How can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?