Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Amy Tan

Image
Hardships can harden even the best person.
Amy Tan
Image
Hope is the adrenalin of the soul.
Amy Tan
Image
You write a book and you hope somebody will go out and pay $24.95 for what you've just said. I think books were my salvation. Books saved me from being miserable.
Amy Tan
Image
My favorite anything is always relative to the context of present time, place and mood. When I finish a book and want to immediately find another by the same author and no other, that author is elevated to my favorite.
Amy Tan
Image
Dementia was like a truth serum.
Amy Tan
Image
too much happiness always overflowed into tears of sorrow.
Amy Tan
Image
The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.
Amy Tan
Image
I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents' promiise. This means nothing to you, because to you promises mean nothing... But later, she will forget her promise. She will forget she had a grandmother.
Amy Tan
Image
And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind.
Amy Tan
Image
What is a secret wish? It is what you want but cannot ask.
Amy Tan
Image
Wise guy, he not go against wind. In Chinese we say, Come from South, blow with wind -- poom! -- North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen.
Amy Tan
Image
I began to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid.
Amy Tan
Image
From what I have observed, when the anesthesia of love wears off, there is always the pain of consequences. You don't have to be stupid to marry the wrong man.
Amy Tan
Image
I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.
Amy Tan
Image
I have survivor skills. Some of that is superficial - what I present to people outwardly - but what makes people resilient is the ability to find humour and irony in situations that would otherwise overpower you.
Amy Tan
Image
I think I've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success.
Amy Tan
Image
Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.
Amy Tan
Image
And I remember wondering why it was that eating something good could make me feel so terrible, while vomiting something terrible could make me feel so good.
Amy Tan
Image
What is true about a person? Would I change in the same way the river changes color but still be the same person?... And then I realized it was the first time I could see the power of the wind. I couldn't see the wind itself, but I could see it carried water that filled the rivers and shaped the countryside.
Amy Tan
Image
I felt foolish and tired, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind to discover there was no one there.
Amy Tan