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

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
Actually
Makes
Everything
Memory
Worse
Writer
Memories
Maybe

More quotes by Amy Tan

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Whenever my mother talks to me, she begins the conversation as if we were already in the middle of an argument.
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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.
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In [writing] fiction, every sentence is its own reward.
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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.
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My mother didn't teach me lessons about being Chinese as strongly as she did the notion of who I was as a female.
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I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents' promiise. This means nothing to you, because to you promises mean nothing... But later, she will forget her promise. She will forget she had a grandmother.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every direction.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I think Kwan intended to show me the world is not a place but the vastness of the sou. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true....If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find them anytime with our hundred secret senses.
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You can never be an artist if your work comes without effort. That is the problem with modernink from a bottle. You do not have to think. You simply write what is swimming on the top of your brain. And the top is nothing but pond scum, dead leaves, and mosquito spawn.
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I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.
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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
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How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently?
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You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying. -An-mei
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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