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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.

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
Mother
Always
Nurturing
Expect
Kill
Childhood
Seen
Difficult

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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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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 think books were my salvation, they saved me from being miserable.
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And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.
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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.
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You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying. -An-mei
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Memory feeds imagination.
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Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.
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To come so far, to lose so much and to find nothing. -Jing-mei
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God, life changes faster than you think.
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I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and, in that respect, I liked Bible stories, because to me they were very gothic.
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That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.
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You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.
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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.
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The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.
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After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?
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Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.
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