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You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying. -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
Someone
Must
Trying
Think
Thinking
Tells

More quotes by Amy Tan

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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
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I think books were my salvation, they saved me from being miserable.
Amy Tan
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I like to go somewhere where I learn something I didn't know before, like the Dry Tortugas between Florida and Cuba.
Amy Tan
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There are a lot of people who think that's what's needed to be successful is always being right, always being careful, always picking the right path.
Amy Tan
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My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes. She sees those who have died and now dwell in the world of Yin, ghosts who leave the mists just to visit her kitchen on Balboa Street in San Francisco.
Amy Tan
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When I returned home that day, I saw my life as if I already knew the happy ending of a story. I looked around the house and thought, soon I will no longer have to see these walls and all the unhappiness they keep inside.
Amy Tan
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We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.
Amy Tan
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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
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I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.
Amy Tan
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Chaos is the penance for leisure.
Amy Tan
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We are living in a world where everything is false. The society is like bright paint applied on top of rotten wood.
Amy Tan
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Ying-ying, you have tiger eyes. They gather fire in the day. At night they shine golden.
Amy Tan
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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.
Amy Tan
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I hated the tests the raised hopes and failed expectations.
Amy Tan
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Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.
Amy Tan
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In [writing] fiction, every sentence is its own reward.
Amy Tan
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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.
Amy Tan
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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.
Amy Tan
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Memory feeds imagination.
Amy Tan
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I won't be what I'm not. -Jing-mei
Amy Tan