Quote

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?

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
Pay
Intentions
Question
Fish
Without
Consequences
Thing
Fishes
Saving
Intention
Saved
Drowning
Consequence
Pays

More quotes by Amy Tan

Image
I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary we did not have any books in the house.
Amy Tan
Image
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
Image
Chaos is the penance for leisure.
Amy Tan
Image
Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone.
Amy Tan
Image
The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.
Amy Tan
Image
Words are more ardent if a man must struggle to find them.
Amy Tan
Image
Why do you think you are missing something you never had?
Amy Tan
Image
It is because I had so much joy that I came to have so much hate.
Amy Tan
Image
Seeing her this last time, I threw myself on her body. And she opened her eyes slowly. I was not scared. I knew she could see me and what she had finally done. So i shut her eyes with my fingers and told her with my heart: I cah see the truth, too. I am strong, too.
Amy Tan
Image
The muse appears at the point in my writing when I sense a subtle shift, a nudge to move over, and everything cracks open, the writing is freed, the lanuage is full, resources are plentiful, ideas pour forth, and to be frank, some of these ideas surprise me. It seems as thought the universe is my friend and is helping me write, its hand over mine.
Amy Tan
Image
I thought this man had long ago drained everything from my heart. But now something strong and bitter flowed and made me feel another emptiness in a place I didn't know was there. I cursed this man aloud so he could hear. You had dog eyes. You jumped and followed whoever called you. Now you chase your own tail.
Amy Tan
Image
I like to go somewhere where I learn something I didn't know before, like the Dry Tortugas between Florida and Cuba.
Amy Tan
Image
Among writers, if you don't have a therapist, it's like saying you don't keep a journal or use the thesaurus. It's a natural accompaniment.
Amy Tan
Image
He asked if he could recite a poem he had written that morning: 'You speak,' he said, 'the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset. I want to follow its trail to eternity.
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
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.
Amy Tan
Image
It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success.
Amy Tan
Image
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
Image
Over time, passion wanes, differences don't.
Amy Tan
Image
I would still like to have that luxury, to be able to just sit and draw for hours and hours and hours. In a way, that's what I do as a writer.
Amy Tan