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Why do you think you are missing something you never had?

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
Missing
Something
Never
Think
Thinking

More quotes by Amy Tan

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A mother is always the beggining. She is how things begin.
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I feel I've always been writing about self-identity. How do we become who we are? So I'm just writing from experience what's concerned me.
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Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?
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I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect for others, and eventually, thought neither of us knew it at the time, chess games... Come from the South, blow from the wind - poom! - North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen.
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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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We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. -Suyuan
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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
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I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents' promiise. This means nothing to you, because to you promises mean nothing... But later, she will forget her promise. She will forget she had a grandmother.
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Why do some memories live only on your tongue or in your nose? Why do others always stay in your heart?
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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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My mother said I was a clingy kid until I was about four. I also remember that from the age of eight she and I fought almost every day.
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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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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When you lose your face..., it is like dropping your necklace down a well. The only way you can get it back is to fall in after it.
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
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It was a distorted form of inverse logic: If hopes never come true, then hope for what you don't want.
Amy Tan
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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.
Amy Tan
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I AM A PERSON WHO THINKS ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE SPIRIT WHEN I WRITE. I THINK ABOUT WHAT CAN'T BE KNOWN AND ONLY IMAGINED. I OFTEN SENSE A SPIRIT OR FORCE OR MEANING BEYOND MYSELF. I LEAVE IT OPEN AS TO WHAT THE SPIRIT IS, BUT I CONTINUE TO MAKE GUESSES.
Amy Tan
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A psychiatrist does not want you to wake up. He tells you to dream some more, to find the pond and pour more tears into it. And really, he's just another bird drinking from your misery.
Amy Tan
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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.
Amy Tan