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I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?

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
Wanted
Children
Things
Combination
Chinese
Circumstances
American
Character
Best

More quotes by Amy Tan

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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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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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If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.
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If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too?
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For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.
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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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All objects exist in a moment of time.
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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.
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That is the nature of endings, it seems. They never end. When all the missing pieces of your life are found, put together with glue of memory and reason, there are more pieces to be found.
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You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.
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On the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mother's case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow.
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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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They know where happiness lies, not in a cave or a country, but in love and the freedom to give and take what has been there all along.
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Then she told me why a tiger is gold and black. It has two ways. The gold side leaps with its fierce heart. The black side stands still with cunning, hiding its gold between the trees, seeing and not being seen, waiting patiently for things to come. I did not learn to use my black side until after the bad man left me.
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I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.
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I would still like to have that luxury, to be able to just sit and draw for hours and hours and hours. In a way, that's what I do as a writer.
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I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever.
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Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?
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People think it's a terrible tragedy when somebody has Alzheimer's. But in my mother's case, it's different. My mother has been unhappy all her life. For the first time in her life, she's happy.
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