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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.

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
Amazing
Magic
Word
Chilly
Whatever
Conjure
Words
Sensation
Feelings
Sensations
Power
Images
Kind
Kinds

More quotes by Amy Tan

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If I look upon my whole life, I cannot think of another time when I felt more comfortable: when I had no worries, fears, or desires, when my life seemed as soft and lovely as lying inside a cocoon of rose silk.
Amy Tan
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People think it's a terrible tragedy when somebody has Alzheimer's. But in my mother's case, it's different. My mother has been unhappy all her life. For the first time in her life, she's happy.
Amy Tan
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I think I've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success.
Amy Tan
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I always thought it mattered, to know what is the worst possible thing that can happen to you, to know how you can avoid it, to not be drawn by the magic of the unspeakable.
Amy Tan
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Over time, passion wanes, differences don't.
Amy Tan
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A mother is always the beggining. She is how things begin.
Amy Tan
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For woman is yin, the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.
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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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.
Amy Tan
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I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect for others, and eventually, thought neither of us knew it at the time, chess games... Come from the South, blow from the wind - poom! - North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen.
Amy Tan
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It was a distorted form of inverse logic: If hopes never come true, then hope for what you don't want.
Amy Tan
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And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.
Amy Tan
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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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Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth.
Amy Tan
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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.
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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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 hated the tests the raised hopes and failed expectations.
Amy Tan
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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
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That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.
Amy Tan