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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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I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.
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Memory feeds imagination.
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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.
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In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.
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Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.
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I think we often write because we feel a loneliness, and people read for the same reason, and then they come away feeling a little less lonely.
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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.
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how can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?
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Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone.
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With each passing day, I didn't lose hope. I fought to have more.
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I love and am loved, fully and freely, nothing expected, more than enough received.
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If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too?
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You can get sucked into the idea that, 'Gosh, this is impressive. Maybe I should do this. It will look good.' Or 'I'll write like this because it will impress that critic.'
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I am fascinated by language in daily life: the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.
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When I returned home that day, I saw my life as if I already knew the happy ending of a story. I looked around the house and thought, soon I will no longer have to see these walls and all the unhappiness they keep inside.
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I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.
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Shanghainese people are good negotiators, they're very persistent, and you grow up in an atmosphere like that - very competitive. That becomes part of your personality, Shanghai personality becomes part of yours.
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It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.
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And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.
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And I remember wondering why it was that eating something good could make me feel so terrible, while vomiting something terrible could make me feel so good.
Amy Tan