Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.
Amy Tan
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Amy Tan
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: February 19
Essayist
Film Writer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Oakland
California
Amy Ruth Tan
Expression
Choices
Freedom
Enough
Mind
Make
Intelligent
Choice
More quotes by Amy Tan
You write a book and you hope somebody will go out and pay $24.95 for what you've just said. I think books were my salvation. Books saved me from being miserable.
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
My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten.
Amy Tan
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.
Amy Tan
It was a distorted form of inverse logic: If hopes never come true, then hope for what you don't want.
Amy Tan
Only two kinds of daughters, she shouted in Chinese. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!
Amy Tan
With hope, a mind is always free.
Amy Tan
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.
Amy Tan
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.
Amy Tan
It means we're looking one way, while following another. We're for one side and also the other. We mean what we say, but our intentions are different.
Amy Tan
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
Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh. -An-mei
Amy Tan
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.
Amy Tan
I saw my mother in a different light. We all need to do that. You have to be displaced from what's comfortable and routine, and then you get to see things with fresh eyes, with new eyes.
Amy Tan
With each passing day, I didn't lose hope. I fought to have more.
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
All objects exist in a moment of time.
Amy Tan
It is because I had so much joy that I came to have so much hate.
Amy Tan
I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary we did not have any books in the house.
Amy Tan
I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.
Amy Tan