Amy Tan Quotes & Sayings

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

My mother had a look on her face that I'll never forget. It was one of complete despair and horror, for losing Bing, for being so foolish as to think she could use faith to change fate. — Amy Tan

The old woman remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum. This bird, boasted the market vendor, was once a duck that stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goose, and now look!
it is too beautiful to eat. — Amy Tan

To keep false hopes is to prolong misery. — Amy Tan

If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too? — Amy Tan

I am fascinated by language in daily life: the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth. — Amy Tan

Seeing her this last time, I threw myself on her body. And she opened her eyes slowly. I was not scared. I knew she could see me and what she had finally done. So i shut her eyes with my fingers and told her with my heart: I cah see the truth, too. I am strong, too. — Amy Tan

If you want to take pictures of Chinese food, you have to taste real Chinese food. The flavors soak into your tongue, go into your stomach. The stomach is where your true feelings are. And if you take photos, these true feelings from your stomach can come out, so that everyone can taste the food just by looking at your pictures. — Amy Tan

I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice. — Amy Tan

Too much happiness always overflowed into tears of sorrow. — Amy Tan

I would never require anyone to read any book. That seems antithetical to why we read - which is to choose a book for our personal reasons. I always shudder when I'm told my books are on required reading lists. — Amy Tan

You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying.
-An-mei — Amy Tan

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. — Amy Tan

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

I let one thing result from another. Of course, all of it could have been just loosely connected coincidences. And whether that's true or not, I know the intention was there. Becasue when I want something to happen-or not happen- I begin to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid. — Amy Tan

All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me.
-Ying Ying — Amy Tan

It isn't that i consider them brave, they are reckless, unpredictable, maddeningly unreliable. But like rogue waves and shooting stars, they also add thrills to a life that otherwise would be as regular as the tide, as routine as day passing into night. — Amy Tan

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 — Amy Tan

You can get sucked into the idea that, 'Gosh, this is impressive. Maybe I should do this. It will look good.' Or 'I'll write like this because it will impress that critic.' — Amy Tan

May the dog-mother rut with a dead devil! — Amy Tan

A girl is like a young tree, she said. You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight. But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first strong wind. And then you will be like a weed, growing wild in any direction, running along the ground until someone pulls you out and throws you away. — Amy Tan

And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation. — Amy Tan

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

Thanks to my mother, I was raised to have a morbid imagination. When I was a child, she often talked about death as warning, as an unavoidable matter of fact. Little Debbie's mom down the block might say, 'Honey, look both ways before crossing the street.' My mother's version: 'You don't look, you get smash flat like sand dab.' (Sand dabs were the cheap fish we bought live in the market, distinguished in my mind by their two eyes affixed on one side of their woebegone cartoon faces.)
The warnings grew worse, depending on the danger at hand. Sex education, for example, consisted of the following advice: 'Don't ever let boy kiss you. You do, you can't stop. Then you have baby. You put baby in garbage can. Police find you, put you in jail, then you life over, better just kill youself. — Amy Tan

Why does love end so quickly and hatred last without end? — Amy Tan

glowered, and she returned — Amy Tan

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

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

External success has to do with people who may see me as a model, or an example, or a representative. As much as I may dislike or want to reject that responsibility, this is something that comes with public success. It's important to give others a sense of hope that it is possible and you can come from really different places in the world and find your own place in the world that's unique for yourself. — Amy Tan

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

The best life you can have as you get into old age is good food, good teeth to eat it with, and few worries when you go to bed at night. — Amy Tan

Writers by nature are subversive, observant, and discerning, and their voice contains that. — Amy Tan

Your only shame is to have shame. — Amy Tan

On the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mother's case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow. — Amy Tan

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. — Amy Tan

You don't care what people think. You don't see your beloved's faults, the slight stinginess, the bit of carelessness, the occasional streak of meanness. You don't mind that he is beneath you socially, educationally, financially, and morally
that's the worst, I think, deficient morals. (Saving Fish From Drowning) — Amy Tan

At the beginning of my career as a writer, I felt I knew nothing of Chinese culture. I was writing about emotional confusion with my mother related to our different beliefs. Hers was based in family history, which I didn't know anything about. I always felt hesitant in talking about Chinese culture and American culture. — Amy Tan

To save myself, I destroyed another, and in doing so, I destroyed myself. — Amy Tan

I feel I've always been writing about self-identity. How do we become who we are? So I'm just writing from experience what's concerned me. — Amy Tan

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

And now at the airport, after shaking hands with everybody, waving good-bye, I think about all the different ways we leave people in this world. Cheerily waving good-bye to some at airports, knowing we'll never see each other again. Leaving others on the side of the road, hoping that we will. Finding my mother in my father's story and saying good-bye before before I have a chance to know her better. — Amy Tan

Libraries are the pride of the city. — Amy Tan

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

I wanted to capture what language ability tests could never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts. — Amy Tan

I have a writer's memory which makes everything worse than maybe it actually was. — Amy Tan

Actually, I'm hoping we might have that. A commitment through time, past, present, future... marriage. — Amy Tan

Those were the reasons we both knew how deep love was, the shared pain that would outlast any pain we caused each other. — Amy Tan

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

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

Life's always a big fucking compromise. You don't always get what you want, no matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how good you are. That's a myth. We're all hanging in the best way we can. — Amy Tan

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

Over time, passion wanes, differences don't. — Amy Tan

Americans don't really look at one another when talking. They talk to their reflections. They look at others or themselves only when they think nobody is watching. So they never see how they really look. They see themselves smiling without their mouth open, or turned to the side where they cannot see their faults. — Amy Tan

Hope is the adrenalin of the soul. — Amy Tan

I'd like to be more forgiving. There are times when I've had a hard time forgiving people who have betrayed me. — Amy Tan

What should we do?, I asked, and I had a pained feeling I thought was the beginning of love.
In those early months we clung to each other with a rather silly desperation, because, in spite of everything my mother or Mrs Jordan could say, there was nothing that really prevented us from seeing each other. With imagined tragedy hovering over us, we became inseparable, two halves creating the whole: yin and yang. I was victim to his hero. I was always in danger and he was always rescuing me. I would fall and he would lift me up. It was exhilarating and draining. The emotional effect of saving and being saved was addicting to both of us. And that, as much as anything we ever did in bed, was how we made love to each other: conjoined where my weaknesses needed protection. — Amy Tan

I read to escape to a more interesting world, not to be locked up in a sweltering prison and find myself vicariously standing among people who are tortured beyond the limits of sanity. — Amy Tan

I had always assumed we had an unspoken understanding about these things: that she didn't really mean I was a failure, and I really meant I would try to respect her opinions more. But listening to Auntie Lin tonight reminds me once agian: My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other's meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more. No doubt she told Auntie Lin I was going back to school to get a doctorate. — Amy Tan

Now you see,' said the turtle, drifting back into the pond, 'why it is useless to cry. Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else's joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears. — Amy Tan

If you asked me how I felt when they told me I would marry Wen Fu, I can say only this: It was like being told I had won a big prize. And it was also like being told my head was going to be chopped off. Something between those two feelings. — Amy Tan

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

God, life changes faster than you think. — Amy Tan

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? — Amy Tan

Only Americans think they have rights," Magic Gourd said. "What laws of heaven give you more rights and allow you to keep them? They are words on paper written by men who make them up and claim them. One day they can blow away, just like that." She — Amy Tan

I love my shadow, this dark side of me that had my same restless nature. — Amy Tan

In It's Only Temporary, Evan Handler confronts the ambiguities of life backward, forward, and in between. With hilarious honesty he reflects on the realization that we can start over again. It's Only Temporary is a heartfelt book for all of us who are getting younger and older at the same time. — Amy Tan

Our world is full of temporary promises and guile. It is necessarily so. We are not evil people, this is just how we survive. There are only a few steps that separate success from failure. Understand this and you will not suffer from disillusionment as often as I did. — Amy Tan

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

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

Reviewers, critics, guest editors... Such people may have an eye for literary conventions and contrivances, allusions and innovations on the art. But what are their tastes based on? Do they tend to choose work that most resembles theirs? — Amy Tan

He saw all those private aspects of me - and I mean not just sexual private parts, but my darker side, my meanness, my pettiness, my self-loathing - all the things I kept hidden. So that with him I was completely naked, and when I was feeling the most vulnerable - when the wrong word would have sent me flying out the door forever - he always said exactly the right thing at the right moment. He didn't allow me to cover myself up. He would grab my hands, look me straight in the eye and tell me something new about why he loved me. — Amy Tan

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

Chinese artists have been subversive over thousands of years, taking what they think of the government and embedding it in their art. There might be censorship of not going as far as they might. — Amy Tan

While it is good to speak well, it is better to speak the truth. — Amy Tan

Where did he go when he left us? I spied the new journal he had started using just last week and held it against my chest. This was who he was. But it also was not. It was sad and beautiful knowledge that a person cannot be found elsewhere but in his own spirit. No one could possess it. — Amy Tan

You can't have intentions without consequences. The question is, who pays for the consequences? Saving fish from drowning. Same thing. Who's saved? Who's not? — Amy Tan

Being a dominatrix gave me the ultimate power: to sing without self-consciousness. — Amy Tan

I had thus learned to push down my feelings, to force myself to not care, to do nothing and let things happen, come what may. — Amy Tan

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

Maybe all Americans who suffer from melancholy act as if they have gone mad. But I truly thought he might throw himself in the river, and I don't want his ghost visiting to keep telling me he's sorry. — Amy Tan

I tried to keep very still, but my heart felt like crickets scratching to get out of the cage. — Amy Tan

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? — Amy Tan

Shanghainese people are good negotiators, they're very persistent, and you grow up in an atmosphere like that - very competitive. That becomes part of your personality, Shanghai personality becomes part of yours. — Amy Tan

My sisters and I stand, arms around each other, laughind and wiping the tears from each others eyes. The flash of the Polaroid goes off and my family hands me the snapshot. My sisters and I watch quietly together, eager to see what develops. Ghe grey-greensurface changes to the bright colors of our three images, sharpening and deepening all at once. And although we don't speak, I know we all see it: Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in suprise to see, her long-cherished wish. — Amy Tan

But my father's faith, as I said, was absolute. Through God's prayer he could be granted exactly what he wanted. — Amy Tan

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

My friend, my editor, still had the cancer. Each day she had to cross a terrible chasm, a bottomless hole of not knowing what to hope or believe. I tried to imagine what she saw, but I did not have her perspective. — Amy Tan

I saw a girl complaining that the pain of not being seen was unbearable ... Now I have perfect understanding. I have already experienced the worst. After this, there is no worse possible thing. — Amy Tan

They know where happiness lies, not in a cave or a country, but in love and the freedom to give and take what has been there all along. — Amy Tan

The muse appears at the point in my writing when I sense a subtle shift, a nudge to move over, and everything cracks open, the writing is freed, the lanuage is full, resources are plentiful, ideas pour forth, and to be frank, some of these ideas surprise me. It seems as thought the universe is my friend and is helping me write, its hand over mine. — Amy Tan

I love my daughter. She and I have shared my body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born, she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. — Amy Tan

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

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

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. — Amy Tan

I felt like a rich vagabond who had passed through the world paving my way with gold fairy dust, then realizing too late that the path disintegrated as soon as I passed over it. — Amy Tan

I've always been a magnet for guilt. — Amy Tan

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

Why would any writer in her right mind ever consider making a movie instead? That's like going from being a monk or a nun to serving as a camp counselor for hundreds of problem children. — Amy Tan

Isn't that how it is when you must decide with your heart? You are not just choosing one thing over another. You are choosing what you want. And you are also choosing what somebody else does not want, and all the consequences that follow. You can tell yourself, That's not my problem, but those words do not wash the trouble away. Maybe it is no longer a problem in your life. But it is always a problem in your heart. — Amy Tan

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. — Amy Tan