Quote

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

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
Character
Best
Wanted
Children
Things
Combination
Chinese
Circumstances
American

More quotes by Amy Tan

Image
After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?
Amy Tan
Image
I love my daughter. She and I have shared my body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born, she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since.
Amy Tan
Image
How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently?
Amy Tan
Image
You have to be your own person. You can't let people's opinions determine how you think about yourself. There's a difference between identity and self-identity.
Amy Tan
Image
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.
Amy Tan
Image
My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes. She sees those who have died and now dwell in the world of Yin, ghosts who leave the mists just to visit her kitchen on Balboa Street in San Francisco.
Amy Tan
Image
...we were like two people standing apart on separate mountain peaks, recklessly leaning forward to throw stones at one another, unaware of the dangerous chasm that separated us.
Amy Tan
Image
I let one thing result from another. Of course, all of it could have been just loosely connected coincidences. And whether that's true or not, I know the intention was there. Becasue when I want something to happen-or not happen- I begin to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid.
Amy Tan
Image
For woman is yin, the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.
Amy Tan
Image
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.
Amy Tan
Image
But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better. -Jing-mei
Amy Tan
Image
Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.
Amy Tan
Image
You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.
Amy Tan
Image
It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success.
Amy Tan
Image
If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever. -An-mei
Amy Tan
Image
We all become different readers in how we respond to books, why we need them, what we take from them. We become different in the questions that arise as we read, in the answers that we find, in the degree of satisfaction or unease we feel with those answers...In the hands of a different reader, the same story can be a different story.
Amy Tan
Image
My mother didn't teach me lessons about being Chinese as strongly as she did the notion of who I was as a female.
Amy Tan
Image
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
Image
I like to go somewhere where I learn something I didn't know before, like the Dry Tortugas between Florida and Cuba.
Amy Tan
Image
But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter. -Ying Ying
Amy Tan