Quote

Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.

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
Wishful
Wished
Dangerous
Form
Writing
Thinking

More quotes by Amy Tan

Image
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.
Amy Tan
Image
Now I was a tiger that neither pounced nor lay waiting between the trees. I became an unseen spirit.
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 was punched breathless by the strongest emotions I have ever felt and they are now stored in my intuition as a writer.
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
Libraries are the pride of the city.
Amy Tan
Image
You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying. -An-mei
Amy Tan
Image
We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.
Amy Tan
Image
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
Image
What is a secret wish? It is what you want but cannot ask.
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
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
Image
And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.
Amy Tan
Image
My mother would say it is literally ghost writers who come to me.
Amy Tan
Image
I think Kwan intended to show me the world is not a place but the vastness of the sou. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true....If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find them anytime with our hundred secret senses.
Amy Tan
Image
I did not lose myself all at once.
Amy Tan
Image
It means we're looking one way, while following another. We're for one side and also the other. We mean what we say, but our intentions are different.
Amy Tan
Image
Only two kinds of daughters, she shouted in Chinese. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!
Amy Tan
Image
What is true about a person? Would I change in the same way the river changes color but still be the same person?... And then I realized it was the first time I could see the power of the wind. I couldn't see the wind itself, but I could see it carried water that filled the rivers and shaped the countryside.
Amy Tan
Image
Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh. -An-mei
Amy Tan