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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
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Amy Tan
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: February 19
Essayist
Film Writer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Oakland
California
Amy Ruth Tan
Way
Skins
Bones
Flesh
Mother
Remember
Nothing
Peel
Sometimes
Scar
Must
Skin
More quotes by Amy Tan
Language is the tool of my trade -and I use them all - all the Englishes I grew up with
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Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.
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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.
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I AM A PERSON WHO THINKS ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE SPIRIT WHEN I WRITE. I THINK ABOUT WHAT CAN'T BE KNOWN AND ONLY IMAGINED. I OFTEN SENSE A SPIRIT OR FORCE OR MEANING BEYOND MYSELF. I LEAVE IT OPEN AS TO WHAT THE SPIRIT IS, BUT I CONTINUE TO MAKE GUESSES.
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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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I think I've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success.
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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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It was a distorted form of inverse logic: If hopes never come true, then hope for what you don't want.
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The life we receive is not always what we choose.
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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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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.
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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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We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense, and yet it is also absolutely necessary. In writing a story, it is the place where I begin.
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People there only dream that it is China, because if you are Chinese you can never let go of China in your mind.
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I think books were my salvation, they saved me from being miserable.
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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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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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Chaos is the penance for leisure.
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Shanghainese people are good negotiators, they're very persistent, and you grow up in an atmosphere like that - very competitive. That becomes part of your personality, Shanghai personality becomes part of yours.
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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?
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