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

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After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?
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If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever. -An-mei
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Mothers have the huge influence, and I feel like they're always teaching us from the day we're born what to be afraid of, what to be cautious of, what we should like and what we should look like. Then we spend half of our life trying to be not like them, and then we reach another part of our lives where we see these things we can't get rid of.
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That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.
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From what I have observed, when the anesthesia of love wears off, there is always the pain of consequences. You don't have to be stupid to marry the wrong man.
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In [writing] fiction, every sentence is its own reward.
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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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But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better. -Jing-mei
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A Mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place.
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Hope is the adrenalin of the soul.
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Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?
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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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On the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mother's case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow.
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Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.
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The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.
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To come so far, to lose so much and to find nothing. -Jing-mei
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And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.
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I wanted to write stories for myself. At first it was purely an aesthetic thing about craft. I just wanted to become good at the art of something. And writing was very private.
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