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Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it - that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.

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
Change
Matter
Much
Made
Thinking
Surrounded
Life
Unhappy
World
Changed
Education

More quotes by Amy Tan

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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.
Amy Tan
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Can you imagine how it is, to want to be neither inside nor outside, to want to be nowhere and disappear?
Amy Tan
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I can never remember things I didn't understand in the first place.
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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.
Amy Tan
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Your life is what you see in front of you. -An-mei
Amy Tan
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I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.
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.
Amy Tan
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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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I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary we did not have any books in the house.
Amy Tan
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We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.
Amy Tan
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I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice.
Amy Tan
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Too many good things all seem the same after a while.
Amy Tan
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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.
Amy Tan
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But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter. -Ying Ying
Amy Tan
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My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes. She sees those who have died and now dwell in the world of Yin, ghosts who leave the mists just to visit her kitchen on Balboa Street in San Francisco.
Amy Tan
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I felt foolish and tired, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind to discover there was no one there.
Amy Tan
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You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.
Amy Tan
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The muse appears at the point in my writing when I sense a subtle shift, a nudge to move over, and everything cracks open, the writing is freed, the lanuage is full, resources are plentiful, ideas pour forth, and to be frank, some of these ideas surprise me. It seems as thought the universe is my friend and is helping me write, its hand over mine.
Amy Tan
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I didn't fear failure. I expected failure.
Amy Tan
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My mother didn't teach me lessons about being Chinese as strongly as she did the notion of who I was as a female.
Amy Tan