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We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. -Suyuan

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
Misery
Despair
Already
Wish
Lost
Back
Prolong
Something
Miseries
Unbearable

More quotes by Amy Tan

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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
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Sometimes you change to survive, and some things you don't give up, or you're too prideful, and then you think well, what's pride? Is it a good thing? Maybe it's a bad thing. That's what I look at in my life. It's always a question in my life I look at, and I never find the answer, because if I did, probably I wouldn't have books to write.
Amy Tan
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So sad! This is the saddest part when you lose someone you love- that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost?
Amy Tan
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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.
Amy Tan
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Then she told me why a tiger is gold and black. It has two ways. The gold side leaps with its fierce heart. The black side stands still with cunning, hiding its gold between the trees, seeing and not being seen, waiting patiently for things to come. I did not learn to use my black side until after the bad man left me.
Amy Tan
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I felt foolish and tired, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind to discover there was no one there.
Amy Tan
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too much happiness always overflowed into tears of sorrow.
Amy Tan
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I started a second novel seven times and I had to throw them away.
Amy Tan
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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
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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.
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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Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.
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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I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.
Amy Tan
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If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.
Amy Tan
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Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth.
Amy Tan
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But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better. -Jing-mei
Amy Tan
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My mother said I was a clingy kid until I was about four. I also remember that from the age of eight she and I fought almost every day.
Amy Tan
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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
Amy Tan
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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