Amy Tan Quotes

Mothers have the huge influence, and I feel like they're always teaching us from the day we're born what to be afraid of, what to be cautious of, what we should like and what we should look like. Then we spend half of our life trying to be not like them, and then we reach another part of our lives where we see these things we can't get rid of.

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

I take a few quick sips. "This is really good." And I mean it. I have never tasted tea like this. It is smooth, pungent, and instantly addicting. "This is from Grand Auntie," my mother explains. "She told me 'If I buy the cheap tea, then I am saying that my whole life has not been worth something better.' A few years ago she bought it for herself. One hundred dollars a pound." "You're kidding." I take another sip. It tastes even better.

Language is the tool of my trade -and I use them all - all the Englishes I grew up with

We are the kind of people who obsess over one word... but we have only one shot to get it right in concert. It was hard the first time I practiced with them. I was so nervous that my vocal chords were paralyzed for about a half-hour.

So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. the pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and giver her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.

Now they seemed to be in a contest over who could irritate her more, and she sometimes had to remind herself that teenagers had souls

That 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? Maybe you lost more maybe less, then thousand different things that come from your memory or imagination - and you do not know which is which, which was true, which is false.

Wise guy, he not go against wind. In Chinese we say, Come from South, blow with wind -- poom! -- North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen.

Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it - that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.

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

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

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

Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth.

And I remember wondering why it was that eating something good could make me feel so terrible, while vomiting something terrible could make me feel so good.

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

Hope is the adrenalin of the soul.

You can have pride in what you do each day, but not arrogance in what you were born with.

No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.

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

It is because I had so much joy that I came to have so much hate.

It was a distorted form of inverse logic: If hopes never come true, then hope for what you don't want.

Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don't you learn to play chess." - Ch. 5

I don't steer clear of genres. I simply haven't steered myself toward some of them.

I have survivor skills. Some of that is superficial - what I present to people outwardly - but what makes people resilient is the ability to find humour and irony in situations that would otherwise overpower you.

Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?

I felt foolish and tired, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind to discover there was no one there.

And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.

So much of history is mystery. We don't know what is lost forever, what will surface again. All objects exist in a moment of time. And that fragment of time is preserved or lost or found in mysterious ways. Mystery is a wonderful part of life.

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

If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever. -An-mei

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

I love and am loved, fully and freely, nothing expected, more than enough received.

No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.

Words to me were magic. You could say a word and it could conjure up all kinds of images or feelings or a chilly sensation or whatever. It was amazing to me that words had this power.

I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn't understand her English, because she was Chinese.

When you lose your face..., it is like dropping your necklace down a well. The only way you can get it back is to fall in after it.

She would be quiet at first. Then she would say a word about something small, something she had noticed, and then another word, and another, each one flung out like a little piece of sand, one from this direction, another form behind, more and more, until his looks, his character, his soul would have eroded away . . . I was afraid that some unseen speck of truth would fly into my eye, blur what I was seeing and transform him from the divine man I thought he was into someone quite mundane, mortally wounded with tiresome habits and irritating imperfections.

If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.

My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten.

Clichés are static, the emotion behind them long spent. If you are tempted to use them, here is a saying of my mother’s: Fang pi bu-cho, cho pi bu-fang. Basically that translates to: "Loud farts don’t stink, and the really smelly ones don’t make a sound." In other words: When you’re full of beans, you just blow a lot of hot air. If you want to have a real impact, be deadly but silent. Oh, also recognize the difference between a bad cliché and a good quotation. My mother’s saying is a good quotation. You should use it often.

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?

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.

For woman is yin, the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.

Among writers, if you don't have a therapist, it's like saying you don't keep a journal or use the thesaurus. It's a natural accompaniment.

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

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.

I was punched breathless by the strongest emotions I have ever felt and they are now stored in my intuition as a writer.