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It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success.

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
Conformity
Rebellion
Attack
Success

More quotes by Amy Tan

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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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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.
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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.'
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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
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I'd like to be more forgiving. There are times when I've had a hard time forgiving people who have betrayed me.
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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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Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.
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My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes. She sees those who have died and now dwell in the world of Yin, ghosts who leave the mists just to visit her kitchen on Balboa Street in San Francisco.
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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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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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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 didn't fear failure. I expected failure.
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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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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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When you lose your face..., it is like dropping your necklace down a well. The only way you can get it back is to fall in after 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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That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.
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All objects exist in a moment of time.
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We all become different readers in how we respond to books, why we need them, what we take from them. We become different in the questions that arise as we read, in the answers that we find, in the degree of satisfaction or unease we feel with those answers...In the hands of a different reader, the same story can be a different story.
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You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.
Amy Tan