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I won't be what I'm not. -Jing-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
Jing

More quotes by Amy Tan

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And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.
Amy Tan
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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.
Amy Tan
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Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don't you learn to play chess. - Ch. 5
Amy Tan
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How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently?
Amy Tan
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It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.
Amy Tan
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All objects exist in a moment of time.
Amy Tan
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In [writing] fiction, every sentence is its own reward.
Amy Tan
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Dementia was like a truth serum.
Amy Tan
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I was punched breathless by the strongest emotions I have ever felt and they are now stored in my intuition as a writer.
Amy Tan
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I have survivor skills. Some of that is superficial - what I present to people outwardly - but what makes people resilient is the ability to find humour and irony in situations that would otherwise overpower you.
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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We all become different readers in how we respond to books, why we need them, what we take from them. We become different in the questions that arise as we read, in the answers that we find, in the degree of satisfaction or unease we feel with those answers...In the hands of a different reader, the same story can be a different story.
Amy Tan
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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.
Amy Tan
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I feel I've always been writing about self-identity. How do we become who we are? So I'm just writing from experience what's concerned me.
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
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The life we receive is not always what we choose.
Amy Tan
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I saw what I had been fighting for: it was for me, a scared child.
Amy Tan
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Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.
Amy Tan
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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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Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden.
Amy Tan