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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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Amy Tan
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: February 19
Essayist
Film Writer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Oakland
California
Amy Ruth Tan
Life
Fate
Hope
Keep
Reason
Must
Trying

More quotes by Amy Tan

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In [writing] fiction, every sentence is its own reward.
Amy Tan
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My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten.
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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Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.
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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?
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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Language is the tool of my trade -and I use them all - all the Englishes I grew up with
Amy Tan
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My mother would say it is literally ghost writers who come to me.
Amy Tan
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So much of history is mystery. We don't know what is lost forever, what will surface again. All objects exist in a moment of time. And that fragment of time is preserved or lost or found in mysterious ways. Mystery is a wonderful part of life.
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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Libraries are the pride of the city.
Amy Tan
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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
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Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth.
Amy Tan
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You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.
Amy Tan
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That 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? Maybe you lost more maybe less, then thousand different things that come from your memory or imagination - and you do not know which is which, which was true, which is false.
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.
Amy Tan
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Chaos is the penance for leisure.
Amy Tan
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I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.
Amy Tan
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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
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Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.
Amy Tan