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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
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.
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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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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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The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.
Amy Tan
And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.
Amy Tan
I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind. -Lindo
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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.
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People there only dream that it is China, because if you are Chinese you can never let go of China in your mind.
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We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense, and yet it is also absolutely necessary. In writing a story, it is the place where I begin.
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I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.
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You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.
Amy Tan
The life we receive is not always what we choose.
Amy Tan
That was a wonderful period in my life. I mean, I didn't become an artist, but somebody let me do something I loved. What a luxury, to do something you love to do.
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I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever.
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And when I say that is certainly true, that our marriage is over. I know what else she will say: Then you must save it. And even though I know it's hopeless- there's absolutely nothing left to save-I'm afraid if I tell her that, she'll still persuade me to try.
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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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There are a lot of people who think that's what's needed to be successful is always being right, always being careful, always picking the right path.
Amy Tan
You can never be an artist if your work comes without effort. That is the problem with modernink from a bottle. You do not have to think. You simply write what is swimming on the top of your brain. And the top is nothing but pond scum, dead leaves, and mosquito spawn.
Amy Tan
My parents told me I would become a doctor and then in my spare time I would become a concert pianist. So, both my day job and my spare time were sort of taken care of.
Amy Tan
I think books were my salvation, they saved me from being miserable.
Amy Tan