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After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?

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
Choose
Says
Past
Remember

More quotes by Amy Tan

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I love my daughter. She and I have shared my body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born, she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since.
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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 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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It means we're looking one way, while following another. We're for one side and also the other. We mean what we say, but our intentions are different.
Amy Tan
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The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.
Amy Tan
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You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.
Amy Tan
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And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. -Rose
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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You don't care what people think. You don't see your beloved's faults, the slight stinginess, the bit of carelessness, the occasional streak of meanness. You don't mind that he is beneath you socially, educationally, financially, and morally--that's the worst, I think, deficient morals. (Saving Fish From Drowning)
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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What is a secret wish? It is what you want but cannot ask.
Amy Tan
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I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and, in that respect, I liked Bible stories, because to me they were very gothic.
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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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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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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And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.
Amy Tan
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Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it - that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.
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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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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When you lose your face..., it is like dropping your necklace down a well. The only way you can get it back is to fall in after it.
Amy Tan