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Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden.

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
Represent
Burden
Writers
Responsibility
Culture
Onerous
Placing

More quotes by Amy Tan

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Now I was a tiger that neither pounced nor lay waiting between the trees. I became an unseen spirit.
Amy Tan
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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.
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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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
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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.
Amy Tan
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What is a secret wish? It is what you want but cannot ask.
Amy Tan
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You can never be an artist if your work comes without effort. That is the problem with modernink from a bottle. You do not have to think. You simply write what is swimming on the top of your brain. And the top is nothing but pond scum, dead leaves, and mosquito spawn.
Amy Tan
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There are a lot of people who think that's what's needed to be successful is always being right, always being careful, always picking the right path.
Amy Tan
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Yet part of me also thinks the whole idea makes perfect sense. The three of us, leaving our differences behind, stepping on the plane together, sitting side by side, lifting off, moving West to reach the East.
Amy Tan
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When you already believe something, how can you suddenly stop? When you are a loyal friend, how can you no longer be one?
Amy Tan
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I have loved works of fiction precisely for their illusions, for the author's sleight-of-hand in showing me the magic, what appeared in the right hand but not in the left.
Amy Tan
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I have survivor skills. Some of that is superficial - what I present to people outwardly - but what makes people resilient is the ability to find humour and irony in situations that would otherwise overpower you.
Amy Tan
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I don't steer clear of genres. I simply haven't steered myself toward some of them.
Amy Tan
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The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.
Amy Tan
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how can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?
Amy Tan
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So sad! This is the saddest part when you lose someone you love- that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost?
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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It is because I had so much joy that I came to have so much hate.
Amy Tan
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You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.
Amy Tan
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I saw a girl complaining that the pain of not being seen was unbearable... Now I have perfect understanding. I have already experienced the worst. After this, there is no worse possible thing.
Amy Tan