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I wanted to write stories for myself. At first it was purely an aesthetic thing about craft. I just wanted to become good at the art of something. And writing was very private.
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
Become
Purely
Wanted
Craft
Firsts
Aesthetic
First
Crafts
Writing
Private
Thing
Write
Something
Art
Good
Stories
More quotes by Amy Tan
That is the nature of endings, it seems. They never end. When all the missing pieces of your life are found, put together with glue of memory and reason, there are more pieces to be found.
Amy Tan
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
My favorite anything is always relative to the context of present time, place and mood. When I finish a book and want to immediately find another by the same author and no other, that author is elevated to my favorite.
Amy Tan
What is a secret wish? It is what you want but cannot ask.
Amy Tan
Don't think too much. That makes you believe you have more choices than you do. Then you mind becomes confused.
Amy Tan
And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.
Amy Tan
You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.
Amy Tan
Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it - that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.
Amy Tan
We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense, and yet it is also absolutely necessary. In writing a story, it is the place where I begin.
Amy Tan
I don't steer clear of genres. I simply haven't steered myself toward some of them.
Amy Tan
The life we receive is not always what we choose.
Amy Tan
After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?
Amy Tan
Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?
Amy Tan
It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.
Amy Tan
We all become different readers in how we respond to books, why we need them, what we take from them. We become different in the questions that arise as we read, in the answers that we find, in the degree of satisfaction or unease we feel with those answers...In the hands of a different reader, the same story can be a different story.
Amy Tan
You can get sucked into the idea that, 'Gosh, this is impressive. Maybe I should do this. It will look good.' Or 'I'll write like this because it will impress that critic.'
Amy Tan
We are living in a world where everything is false. The society is like bright paint applied on top of rotten wood.
Amy Tan
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
I think we often write because we feel a loneliness, and people read for the same reason, and then they come away feeling a little less lonely.
Amy Tan
Words to me were magic. You could say a word and it could conjure up all kinds of images or feelings or a chilly sensation or whatever. It was amazing to me that words had this power.
Amy Tan
