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

More quotes by Amy Tan

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I let one thing result from another. Of course, all of it could have been just loosely connected coincidences. And whether that's true or not, I know the intention was there. Becasue when I want something to happen-or not happen- I begin to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid.
Amy Tan
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I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.
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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...we were like two people standing apart on separate mountain peaks, recklessly leaning forward to throw stones at one another, unaware of the dangerous chasm that separated us.
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God, life changes faster than you think.
Amy Tan
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That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.
Amy Tan
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I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.
Amy Tan
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Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.
Amy Tan
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I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.
Amy Tan
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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
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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.
Amy Tan
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Your life is what you see in front of you. -An-mei
Amy Tan
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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.
Amy Tan
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Too many good things all seem the same after a while.
Amy Tan
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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
Amy Tan
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Mothers have the huge influence, and I feel like they're always teaching us from the day we're born what to be afraid of, what to be cautious of, what we should like and what we should look like. Then we spend half of our life trying to be not like them, and then we reach another part of our lives where we see these things we can't get rid of.
Amy Tan
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It was a distorted form of inverse logic: If hopes never come true, then hope for what you don't want.
Amy Tan
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The life we receive is not always what we choose.
Amy Tan
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In [writing] fiction, every sentence is its own reward.
Amy Tan
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Your only shame is to have shame.
Amy Tan