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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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Amy Tan
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: February 19
Essayist
Film Writer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Oakland
California
Amy Ruth Tan
Allows
Understanding
Remember
Heart
Remembrance

More quotes by Amy Tan

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No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.
Amy Tan
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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.
Amy Tan
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I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn't understand her English, because she was Chinese.
Amy Tan
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Now they seemed to be in a contest over who could irritate her more, and she sometimes had to remind herself that teenagers had souls
Amy Tan
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I think Kwan intended to show me the world is not a place but the vastness of the sou. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true....If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find them anytime with our hundred secret senses.
Amy Tan
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What is a secret wish? It is what you want but cannot ask.
Amy Tan
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We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense, and yet it is also absolutely necessary. In writing a story, it is the place where I begin.
Amy Tan
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It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.
Amy Tan
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I started a second novel seven times and I had to throw them away.
Amy Tan
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You can have pride in what you do each day, but not arrogance in what you were born with.
Amy Tan
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I have always known a thing before it happens.
Amy Tan
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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 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 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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Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.
Amy Tan
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All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. -Ying Ying
Amy Tan
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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.
Amy Tan
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Language is the tool of my trade -and I use them all - all the Englishes I grew up with
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