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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
Else
America
Giving
Circumstances
Nobody
Gives
Says
Somebody
Keep

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My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten.
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I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.
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Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden.
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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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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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While it is good to speak well, it is better to speak the truth.
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Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?
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There's no hope. There's no reason to keep trying. Because you must. This is not hope. Not reason. This is your fate. This is your life, what you must do.
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When my daughter looks at me, she sees a small old lady. That is because she sees only with her outside eyes. She has no chuming, no inside knowing of things. If she had chuming she would see a tiger lady. And she would have careful fear.
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And I remember wondering why it was that eating something good could make me feel so terrible, while vomiting something terrible could make me feel so good.
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Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.
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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.
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I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and, in that respect, I liked Bible stories, because to me they were very gothic.
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We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.
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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.
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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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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.
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I love my daughter. She and I have shared my body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born, she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since.
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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.
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And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.
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