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My mother had a look on her face that I'll never forget. It was one of complete despair and horror, for losing Bing, for being so foolish as to think she could use faith to change fate.

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
Change
Fate
Look
Losing
Looks
Face
Never
Forget
Bing
Think
Faces
Foolish
Thinking
Faith
Complete
Use
Horror
Mother
Despair

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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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Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.
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We are the kind of people who obsess over one word... but we have only one shot to get it right in concert. It was hard the first time I practiced with them. I was so nervous that my vocal chords were paralyzed for about a half-hour.
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I think books were my salvation, they saved me from being miserable.
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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 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.
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I felt stuck in the bottom of a wishing well. I was desperate to shout what I wanted, but I didn’t know what that was. I knew only what it wasn’t. The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan
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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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I feel I've always been writing about self-identity. How do we become who we are? So I'm just writing from experience what's concerned me.
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Dementia was like a truth serum.
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We are living in a world where everything is false. The society is like bright paint applied on top of rotten wood.
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That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.
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You see what power is holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them.
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In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.
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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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