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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.

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
Enough
Realizing
Writing
Called
Something
Voice
People
Write
Didn
Thought
Originality
Wells
Clever
Well
Realize

More quotes by Amy Tan

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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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Shanghainese people are good negotiators, they're very persistent, and you grow up in an atmosphere like that - very competitive. That becomes part of your personality, Shanghai personality becomes part of yours.
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You can't have intentions without consequences. The question is, who pays for the consequences? Saving fish from drowning. Same thing. Who’s saved? Who’s not?
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I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect for others, and eventually, thought neither of us knew it at the time, chess games... Come from the South, blow from the wind - poom! - North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen.
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Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh. -An-mei
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So much of history is mystery. We don't know what is lost forever, what will surface again. All objects exist in a moment of time. And that fragment of time is preserved or lost or found in mysterious ways. Mystery is a wonderful part of life.
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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 felt stuck in the bottom of a wishing well. I was desperate to shout what I wanted, but I didn’t know what that was. I knew only what it wasn’t. The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan
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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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It is because I had so much joy that I came to have so much hate.
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I have a writer's memory, which makes everything worse than maybe it actually was.
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I saw my mother in a different light. We all need to do that. You have to be displaced from what's comfortable and routine, and then you get to see things with fresh eyes, with new eyes.
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They know where happiness lies, not in a cave or a country, but in love and the freedom to give and take what has been there all along.
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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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A Mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place.
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The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.
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If you are greedy, what is inside you is what makes you always hungry.
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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 hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.
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And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.
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