Quote

No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.

Amy Tan

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Amy Tan
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: February 19
Essayist
Film Writer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Oakland
California
Amy Ruth Tan
Think
Encouragement
Thinking
Meant
Anybody
Reader
Fiction
Knew
Family
Discouragement
Didn
Literary

More quotes by Amy Tan

Image
My mother said I was a clingy kid until I was about four. I also remember that from the age of eight she and I fought almost every day.
Amy Tan
Image
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.
Amy Tan
Image
That is the saddest part when you lose someone you love - that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost? Maybe you lost more maybe less, then thousand different things that come from your memory or imagination - and you do not know which is which, which was true, which is false.
Amy Tan
Image
I saw what I had been fighting for: it was for me, a scared child.
Amy Tan
Image
I'd like to be more forgiving. There are times when I've had a hard time forgiving people who have betrayed me.
Amy Tan
Image
Only two kinds of daughters, she shouted in Chinese. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!
Amy Tan
Image
If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too?
Amy Tan
Image
Language is the tool of my trade -and I use them all - all the Englishes I grew up with
Amy Tan
Image
I like to go somewhere where I learn something I didn't know before, like the Dry Tortugas between Florida and Cuba.
Amy Tan
Image
Chaos is the penance for leisure.
Amy Tan
Image
The life we receive is not always what we choose.
Amy Tan
Image
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
Image
You see what power is holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them.
Amy Tan
Image
Those who don't heed the warnings don't live to admit they were stupid not to do so.
Amy Tan
Image
That was a wonderful period in my life. I mean, I didn't become an artist, but somebody let me do something I loved. What a luxury, to do something you love to do.
Amy Tan
Image
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
Image
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.
Amy Tan
Image
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.
Amy Tan
Image
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.
Amy Tan
Image
I can never remember things I didn't understand in the first place.
Amy Tan