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I started a second novel seven times and I had to throw them away.

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
Novel
Started
Times
Away
Writing
Throw
Seven
Second

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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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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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Chaos is the penance for leisure.
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Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.
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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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I don't steer clear of genres. I simply haven't steered myself toward some of them.
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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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Can you imagine how it is, to want to be neither inside nor outside, to want to be nowhere and disappear?
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The life we receive is not always what we choose.
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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 can never remember things I didn't understand in the first place.
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You can have pride in what you do each day, but not arrogance in what you were born with.
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I began to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid.
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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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Sure I loved him - too much. And he loved me, only not enough. I just want someone who thinks I'm number one in his life. I'm not willing to accept emotional scraps anymore.
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How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently?
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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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I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.
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After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?
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Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.
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