Quote

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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Amy Tan
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: February 19
Essayist
Film Writer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Oakland
California
Amy Ruth Tan
Skills
Outwardly
Present
Resilient
Situation
Survivor
Ability
Humour
Makes
Superficial
Find
Irony
Would
Situations
People
Otherwise
Overpower

More quotes by Amy Tan

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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
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I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and, in that respect, I liked Bible stories, because to me they were very gothic.
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My parents told me I would become a doctor and then in my spare time I would become a concert pianist. So, both my day job and my spare time were sort of taken care of.
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Words are more ardent if a man must struggle to find them.
Amy Tan
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While it is good to speak well, it is better to speak the truth.
Amy Tan
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If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too?
Amy Tan
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People there only dream that it is China, because if you are Chinese you can never let go of China in your mind.
Amy Tan
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I feel I've always been writing about self-identity. How do we become who we are? So I'm just writing from experience what's concerned me.
Amy Tan
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We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.
Amy Tan
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I like to go somewhere where I learn something I didn't know before, like the Dry Tortugas between Florida and Cuba.
Amy Tan
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My mother would say it is literally ghost writers who come to me.
Amy Tan
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I can never remember things I didn't understand in the first place.
Amy Tan
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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
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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 felt like a rich vagabond who had passed through the world paving my way with gold fairy dust, then realizing too late that the path disintegrated as soon as I passed over it.
Amy Tan
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I did not lose myself all at once.
Amy Tan
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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
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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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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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I'd like to be more forgiving. There are times when I've had a hard time forgiving people who have betrayed me.
Amy Tan