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For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.

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
Wanted
Believe
Unlike
Mother
Anything

More quotes by Amy Tan

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For woman is yin, the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.
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Now they seemed to be in a contest over who could irritate her more, and she sometimes had to remind herself that teenagers had souls
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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.
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I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.
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You see what power is holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them.
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I don't steer clear of genres. I simply haven't steered myself toward some of them.
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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.
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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
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Now you see,' said the turtle, drifting back into the pond, 'why it is useless to cry. Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else's joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.
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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.
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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.
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But I was no longer sacared. I could see what was inside me. -Lindo
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I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary we did not have any books in the house.
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When you already believe something, how can you suddenly stop? When you are a loyal friend, how can you no longer be one?
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You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.
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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.
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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)
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You write a book and you hope somebody will go out and pay $24.95 for what you've just said. I think books were my salvation. Books saved me from being miserable.
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I think books were my salvation, they saved me from being miserable.
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A mother is always the beggining. She is how things begin.
Amy Tan