Quote

Your life is what you see in front of you. -An-mei

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
Fronts
Front
Life

More quotes by Amy Tan

Image
It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success.
Amy Tan
Image
People think it's a terrible tragedy when somebody has Alzheimer's. But in my mother's case, it's different. My mother has been unhappy all her life. For the first time in her life, she's happy.
Amy Tan
Image
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
Image
And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind.
Amy Tan
Image
We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.
Amy Tan
Image
And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.
Amy Tan
Image
Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this. Everyone else want best quality. You thinking different.
Amy Tan
Image
Over time, passion wanes, differences don't.
Amy Tan
Image
I think books were my salvation, they saved me from being miserable.
Amy Tan
Image
But I was no longer sacared. I could see what was inside me. -Lindo
Amy Tan
Image
Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.
Amy Tan
Image
My mother would say it is literally ghost writers who come to me.
Amy Tan
Image
You have to be your own person. You can't let people's opinions determine how you think about yourself. There's a difference between identity and self-identity.
Amy Tan
Image
I always thought it mattered, to know what is the worst possible thing that can happen to you, to know how you can avoid it, to not be drawn by the magic of the unspeakable.
Amy Tan
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Amy Tan
Image
Whenever my mother talks to me, she begins the conversation as if we were already in the middle of an argument.
Amy Tan
Image
I have always known a thing before it happens.
Amy Tan