You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.
Amy TanWe are living in a world where everything is false. The society is like bright paint applied on top of rotten wood.
Amy TanNow I was a tiger that neither pounced nor lay waiting between the trees. I became an unseen spirit.
Amy TanShe [my mother] said that if I listened to her, later I would know what she knew: where true words came from, always from up high, above everything else. And if I didn't listen to her, she said my ear would bend too easily to other people, all saying words that had no lasting meaning, because they came from the bottom of their hearts, where their own desires lived, a place where I could not belong.
Amy Tan