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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
Life
Write
Aliens
Thought
Jazz
Also
Lessons
Firsts
Tried
First
Completely
Take
Fiction
Writing
Playing
Things
Making
Alien

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Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.
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Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth.
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Shanghainese people are good negotiators, they're very persistent, and you grow up in an atmosphere like that - very competitive. That becomes part of your personality, Shanghai personality becomes part of yours.
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I won't be what I'm not. -Jing-mei
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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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And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.
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To come so far, to lose so much and to find nothing. -Jing-mei
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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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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.
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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
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When you already believe something, how can you suddenly stop? When you are a loyal friend, how can you no longer be one?
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While it is good to speak well, it is better to speak the truth.
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I love and am loved, fully and freely, nothing expected, more than enough received.
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We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.
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I have a writer's memory, which makes everything worse than maybe it actually was.
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For woman is yin, the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.
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I'd like to be more forgiving. There are times when I've had a hard time forgiving people who have betrayed me.
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But I don't have anything left inside of me to figure out where I fit in or what I want. If I want anything, it's to know what's possible to want.
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