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No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.

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
Social
Attached
Reality
Societies
Two
Worlds
Ever
Similar
Live
Labels
Sufficiently
Different
Considered
Representing
World
Merely
Distinct
Language
Languages

More quotes by Amy Tan

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You can't have intentions without consequences. The question is, who pays for the consequences? Saving fish from drowning. Same thing. Who’s saved? Who’s not?
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And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind.
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We are the kind of people who obsess over one word... but we have only one shot to get it right in concert. It was hard the first time I practiced with them. I was so nervous that my vocal chords were paralyzed for about a half-hour.
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I saw what I had been fighting for: it was for me, a scared child.
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I love my daughter. She and I have shared my body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born, she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since.
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For woman is yin, the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.
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Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this. Everyone else want best quality. You thinking different.
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While it is good to speak well, it is better to speak the truth.
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how can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?
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You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.
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Now I was a tiger that neither pounced nor lay waiting between the trees. I became an unseen spirit.
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Wise guy, he not go against wind. In Chinese we say, Come from South, blow with wind -- poom! -- North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen.
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If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too?
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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.
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I didn't fear failure. I expected failure.
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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.
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You write a book and you hope somebody will go out and pay $24.95 for what you've just said. I think books were my salvation. Books saved me from being miserable.
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If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever. -An-mei
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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.
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I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.
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