Quote

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

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I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength...strongest wind cannot be seen.
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My mother would say it is literally ghost writers who come to me.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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...we were like two people standing apart on separate mountain peaks, recklessly leaning forward to throw stones at one another, unaware of the dangerous chasm that separated us.
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There's no hope. There's no reason to keep trying. Because you must. This is not hope. Not reason. This is your fate. This is your life, what you must do.
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I am fascinated by language in daily life: the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.
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Mothers have the huge influence, and I feel like they're always teaching us from the day we're born what to be afraid of, what to be cautious of, what we should like and what we should look like. Then we spend half of our life trying to be not like them, and then we reach another part of our lives where we see these things we can't get rid of.
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Libraries are the pride of the city.
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If you are greedy, what is inside you is what makes you always hungry.
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On the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mother's case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow.
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But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter. -Ying Ying
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Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.
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I can never remember things I didn't understand in the first place.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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But later that day, the streets of Kweilin were strewn with newspapers reporting great Kuomintang victories, and on top of these papers, like fresh fish from a butcher, lay rows of people - men, women and children who had never lost hope, but had lost their lives instead.
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