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Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone.

Amy Tan

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Amy Tan
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: February 19
Essayist
Film Writer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Oakland
California
Amy Ruth Tan
Story
Someone
Stories
Also
Giving
Extreme
Writing
Extremes
Privilege
Gift

More quotes by Amy Tan

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But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter. -Ying Ying
Amy Tan
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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
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Then she told me why a tiger is gold and black. It has two ways. The gold side leaps with its fierce heart. The black side stands still with cunning, hiding its gold between the trees, seeing and not being seen, waiting patiently for things to come. I did not learn to use my black side until after the bad man left me.
Amy Tan
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Sure I loved him - too much. And he loved me, only not enough. I just want someone who thinks I'm number one in his life. I'm not willing to accept emotional scraps anymore.
Amy Tan
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I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn't understand her English, because she was Chinese.
Amy Tan
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What is true about a person? Would I change in the same way the river changes color but still be the same person?... And then I realized it was the first time I could see the power of the wind. I couldn't see the wind itself, but I could see it carried water that filled the rivers and shaped the countryside.
Amy Tan
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We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.
Amy Tan
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I did not lose myself all at once.
Amy Tan
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I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.
Amy Tan
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...we were like two people standing apart on separate mountain peaks, recklessly leaning forward to throw stones at one another, unaware of the dangerous chasm that separated us.
Amy Tan
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Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden.
Amy Tan
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I have loved works of fiction precisely for their illusions, for the author's sleight-of-hand in showing me the magic, what appeared in the right hand but not in the left.
Amy Tan
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How do I create something out of nothing? And how do I create my own life? I think it is by questioning, and saying to myself that there are no absolute truths.
Amy Tan
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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
Amy Tan
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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
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I was punched breathless by the strongest emotions I have ever felt and they are now stored in my intuition as a writer.
Amy Tan
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You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.
Amy Tan
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It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success.
Amy Tan
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I love and am loved, fully and freely, nothing expected, more than enough received.
Amy Tan
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That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.
Amy Tan