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In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.

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
Giving
Circumstances
Nobody
Gives
Says
Somebody
Keep
Else
America

More quotes by 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.
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I wanted to write stories for myself. At first it was purely an aesthetic thing about craft. I just wanted to become good at the art of something. And writing was very private.
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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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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.
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I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?
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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.
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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.
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Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.
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My parents told me I would become a doctor and then in my spare time I would become a concert pianist. So, both my day job and my spare time were sort of taken care of.
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Sometimes you change to survive, and some things you don't give up, or you're too prideful, and then you think well, what's pride? Is it a good thing? Maybe it's a bad thing. That's what I look at in my life. It's always a question in my life I look at, and I never find the answer, because if I did, probably I wouldn't have books to write.
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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.
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I like to go somewhere where I learn something I didn't know before, like the Dry Tortugas between Florida and Cuba.
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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.
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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.
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I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control.
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Hardships can harden even the best person.
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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.
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All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. -Ying Ying
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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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We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense, and yet it is also absolutely necessary. In writing a story, it is the place where I begin.
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