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

More quotes by Amy Tan

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You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying. -An-mei
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Hope is the adrenalin of the soul.
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I love my daughter. She and I have shared my body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born, she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since.
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My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten.
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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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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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When my daughter looks at me, she sees a small old lady. That is because she sees only with her outside eyes. She has no chuming, no inside knowing of things. If she had chuming she would see a tiger lady. And she would have careful fear.
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When I returned home that day, I saw my life as if I already knew the happy ending of a story. I looked around the house and thought, soon I will no longer have to see these walls and all the unhappiness they keep inside.
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Chaos is the penance for leisure.
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A psychiatrist does not want you to wake up. He tells you to dream some more, to find the pond and pour more tears into it. And really, he's just another bird drinking from your misery.
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That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.
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I can never remember things I didn't understand in the first place.
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I was punched breathless by the strongest emotions I have ever felt and they are now stored in my intuition as a writer.
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Whenever my mother talks to me, she begins the conversation as if we were already in the middle of an argument.
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Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone.
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If I look upon my whole life, I cannot think of another time when I felt more comfortable: when I had no worries, fears, or desires, when my life seemed as soft and lovely as lying inside a cocoon of rose silk.
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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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How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently?
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Why do you think you are missing something you never had?
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But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter. -Ying Ying
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