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We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense, and yet it is also absolutely necessary. In writing a story, it is the place where I begin.

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
Story
Hate
Ambiguity
Sense
Motivation
Place
Absolutely
Stories
Begin
Also
Necessary
Writing
Inspiration
Moral

More quotes by Amy Tan

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We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. -Suyuan
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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.
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I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control.
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Memory feeds imagination.
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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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My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten.
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I won't be what I'm not. -Jing-mei
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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 started a second novel seven times and I had to throw them away.
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Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh. -An-mei
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Language is the tool of my trade -and I use them all - all the Englishes I grew up with
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Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.
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I didn't fear failure. I expected failure.
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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 learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.
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God, life changes faster than you think.
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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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I think we often write because we feel a loneliness, and people read for the same reason, and then they come away feeling a little less lonely.
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Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.
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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