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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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Amy Tan
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: February 19
Essayist
Film Writer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Oakland
California
Amy Ruth Tan
Take
Fiction
Writing
Playing
Things
Making
Alien
Life
Write
Aliens
Thought
Jazz
Also
Lessons
Firsts
Tried
First
Completely

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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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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 wanted to write stories for myself. At first it was purely an aesthetic thing about craft. I just wanted to become good at the art of something. And writing was very private.
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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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You have to be your own person. You can't let people's opinions determine how you think about yourself. There's a difference between identity and self-identity.
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We all become different readers in how we respond to books, why we need them, what we take from them. We become different in the questions that arise as we read, in the answers that we find, in the degree of satisfaction or unease we feel with those answers...In the hands of a different reader, the same story can be a different story.
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The life we receive is not always what we choose.
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I've always been a magnet for guilt.
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I let one thing result from another. Of course, all of it could have been just loosely connected coincidences. And whether that's true or not, I know the intention was there. Becasue when I want something to happen-or not happen- I begin to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid.
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What is a secret wish? It is what you want but cannot ask.
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Hardships can harden even the best person.
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Don't think too much. That makes you believe you have more choices than you do. Then you mind becomes confused.
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Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this. Everyone else want best quality. You thinking different.
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Libraries are the pride of the city.
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Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.
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I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect for others, and eventually, thought neither of us knew it at the time, chess games... Come from the South, blow from the wind - poom! - North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen.
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People there only dream that it is China, because if you are Chinese you can never let go of China in your mind.
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I always thought it mattered, to know what is the worst possible thing that can happen to you, to know how you can avoid it, to not be drawn by the magic of the unspeakable.
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He asked if he could recite a poem he had written that morning: 'You speak,' he said, 'the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset. I want to follow its trail to eternity.
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I began to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid.
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