Amy Tan Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Amy Tan on Wise Famous Quotes.

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?