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I didn't fear failure. I expected failure.

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
Failure
Fear
Didn
Expected

More quotes by Amy Tan

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Among writers, if you don't have a therapist, it's like saying you don't keep a journal or use the thesaurus. It's a natural accompaniment.
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I would still like to have that luxury, to be able to just sit and draw for hours and hours and hours. In a way, that's what I do as a writer.
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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.
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Yesterday my daughter said to me, 'My marriage is falling apart.' And now all she can do is watch it falling.
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Then she told me why a tiger is gold and black. It has two ways. The gold side leaps with its fierce heart. The black side stands still with cunning, hiding its gold between the trees, seeing and not being seen, waiting patiently for things to come. I did not learn to use my black side until after the bad man left me.
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God, life changes faster than you think.
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Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.
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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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Seeing her this last time, I threw myself on her body. And she opened her eyes slowly. I was not scared. I knew she could see me and what she had finally done. So i shut her eyes with my fingers and told her with my heart: I cah see the truth, too. I am strong, too.
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You see what power is holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them.
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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.
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There are a lot of people who think that's what's needed to be successful is always being right, always being careful, always picking the right path.
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I began to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid.
Amy Tan
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And when I say that is certainly true, that our marriage is over. I know what else she will say: Then you must save it. And even though I know it's hopeless- there's absolutely nothing left to save-I'm afraid if I tell her that, she'll still persuade me to try.
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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 think we often write because we feel a loneliness, and people read for the same reason, and then they come away feeling a little less lonely.
Amy Tan
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Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it - that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.
Amy Tan
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I hated the tests the raised hopes and failed expectations.
Amy Tan
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I don't steer clear of genres. I simply haven't steered myself toward some of them.
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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.
Amy Tan