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

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Libraries are the pride of the city.
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It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success.
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Memory feeds imagination.
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I have loved works of fiction precisely for their illusions, for the author's sleight-of-hand in showing me the magic, what appeared in the right hand but not in the left.
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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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In [writing] fiction, every sentence is its own reward.
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Whenever my mother talks to me, she begins the conversation as if we were already in the middle of an argument.
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But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter. -Ying Ying
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If you are greedy, what is inside you is what makes you always hungry.
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I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.
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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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To come so far, to lose so much and to find nothing. -Jing-mei
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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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Hardships can harden even the best person.
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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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No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.
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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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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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Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone.
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