Quote

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.

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
Tears
Drifting
Joy
Swallow
Learn
Sorrows
Away
Wash
Else
Feed
Turtle
Someone
Useless
Turtles
Back
Cry
Pond
Must
Sorrow
Ponds

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I love and am loved, fully and freely, nothing expected, more than enough received.
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My mother had a look on her face that I'll never forget. It was one of complete despair and horror, for losing Bing, for being so foolish as to think she could use faith to change fate.
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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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Sure I loved him - too much. And he loved me, only not enough. I just want someone who thinks I'm number one in his life. I'm not willing to accept emotional scraps anymore.
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I have always known a thing before it happens.
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Language is the tool of my trade -and I use them all - all the Englishes I grew up with
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I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn't understand her English, because she was Chinese.
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Words are more ardent if a man must struggle to find them.
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We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.
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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 would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.
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Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh. -An-mei
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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.
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That is the nature of endings, it seems. They never end. When all the missing pieces of your life are found, put together with glue of memory and reason, there are more pieces to be found.
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I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?
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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.
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Your life is what you see in front of you. -An-mei
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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.
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Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.
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Yet part of me also thinks the whole idea makes perfect sense. The three of us, leaving our differences behind, stepping on the plane together, sitting side by side, lifting off, moving West to reach the East.
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