Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Amy Tan
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: February 19
Essayist
Film Writer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Oakland
California
Amy Ruth Tan
People
Write
Didn
Thought
Originality
Wells
Clever
Well
Realize
Enough
Realizing
Writing
Called
Something
Voice

More quotes by Amy Tan

Image
I am fascinated by language in daily life: the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.
Amy Tan
Image
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.
Amy Tan
Image
It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success.
Amy Tan
Image
You have to be your own person. You can't let people's opinions determine how you think about yourself. There's a difference between identity and self-identity.
Amy Tan
Image
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.
Amy Tan
Image
I thought this man had long ago drained everything from my heart. But now something strong and bitter flowed and made me feel another emptiness in a place I didn't know was there. I cursed this man aloud so he could hear. You had dog eyes. You jumped and followed whoever called you. Now you chase your own tail.
Amy Tan
Image
You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.
Amy Tan
Image
I love and am loved, fully and freely, nothing expected, more than enough received.
Amy Tan
Image
For woman is yin, the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.
Amy Tan
Image
...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.
Amy Tan
Image
But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter. -Ying Ying
Amy Tan
Image
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
Image
For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.
Amy Tan
Image
Now you see,' said the turtle, drifting back into the pond, 'why it is useless to cry. Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else's joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.
Amy Tan
Image
Chaos is the penance for leisure.
Amy Tan
Image
But later that day, the streets of Kweilin were strewn with newspapers reporting great Kuomintang victories, and on top of these papers, like fresh fish from a butcher, lay rows of people - men, women and children who had never lost hope, but had lost their lives instead.
Amy Tan
Image
Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth.
Amy Tan
Image
In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.
Amy Tan
Image
We are living in a world where everything is false. The society is like bright paint applied on top of rotten wood.
Amy Tan
Image
Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden.
Amy Tan