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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?

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
Heart
Always
Nose
Noses
Tongue
Stay
Memories
Others
Live

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I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control.
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My mother had a very difficult childhood, having seen her own mother kill herself. So she didnt always know how to be the nurturing mother that we all expect we should have.
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What is a secret wish? It is what you want but cannot ask.
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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.
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My favorite anything is always relative to the context of present time, place and mood. When I finish a book and want to immediately find another by the same author and no other, that author is elevated to my favorite.
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Then she told me why a tiger is gold and black. It has two ways. The gold side leaps with its fierce heart. The black side stands still with cunning, hiding its gold between the trees, seeing and not being seen, waiting patiently for things to come. I did not learn to use my black side until after the bad man left me.
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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.
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Words to me were magic. You could say a word and it could conjure up all kinds of images or feelings or a chilly sensation or whatever. It was amazing to me that words had this power.
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My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten.
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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.
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I have always known a thing before it happens.
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Hardships can harden even the best person.
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The life we receive is not always what we choose.
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But later that day, the streets of Kweilin were strewn with newspapers reporting great Kuomintang victories, and on top of these papers, like fresh fish from a butcher, lay rows of people - men, women and children who had never lost hope, but had lost their lives instead.
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You write a book and you hope somebody will go out and pay $24.95 for what you've just said. I think books were my salvation. Books saved me from being miserable.
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And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind.
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Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.
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You can have pride in what you do each day, but not arrogance in what you were born with.
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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.
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Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don't you learn to play chess. - Ch. 5
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