Quote

My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten.

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
Time
Kindergarten
Straight
Expected
Expectations
Parents
Parent
High

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
It was a distorted form of inverse logic: If hopes never come true, then hope for what you don't want.
Amy Tan
Image
I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents' promiise. This means nothing to you, because to you promises mean nothing... But later, she will forget her promise. She will forget she had a grandmother.
Amy Tan
Image
If you are greedy, what is inside you is what makes you always hungry.
Amy Tan
Image
I saw what I had been fighting for: it was for me, a scared child.
Amy Tan
Image
After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?
Amy Tan
Image
I always thought it mattered, to know what is the worst possible thing that can happen to you, to know how you can avoid it, to not be drawn by the magic of the unspeakable.
Amy Tan
Image
The muse appears at the point in my writing when I sense a subtle shift, a nudge to move over, and everything cracks open, the writing is freed, the lanuage is full, resources are plentiful, ideas pour forth, and to be frank, some of these ideas surprise me. It seems as thought the universe is my friend and is helping me write, its hand over mine.
Amy Tan
Image
I began to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid.
Amy Tan
Image
Don't think too much. That makes you believe you have more choices than you do. Then you mind becomes confused.
Amy Tan
Image
The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.
Amy Tan
Image
I have a writer's memory, which makes everything worse than maybe it actually was.
Amy Tan
Image
But I don't have anything left inside of me to figure out where I fit in or what I want. If I want anything, it's to know what's possible to want.
Amy Tan
Image
I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn't understand her English, because she was Chinese.
Amy Tan
Image
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
Image
Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden.
Amy Tan
Image
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.
Amy Tan
Image
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
Image
I won't be what I'm not. -Jing-mei
Amy Tan
Image
I didn't fear failure. I expected failure.
Amy Tan