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To save myself, I destroyed another, and in doing so, I destroyed myself.

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
Destroyed
Lovely
Save
Another
Life

More quotes by Amy Tan

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My mother had a very difficult childhood, having seen her own mother kill herself. So she didnt always know how to be the nurturing mother that we all expect we should have.
Amy Tan
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Seeing her this last time, I threw myself on her body. And she opened her eyes slowly. I was not scared. I knew she could see me and what she had finally done. So i shut her eyes with my fingers and told her with my heart: I cah see the truth, too. I am strong, too.
Amy Tan
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Ying-ying, you have tiger eyes. They gather fire in the day. At night they shine golden.
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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.
Amy Tan
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I started a second novel seven times and I had to throw them away.
Amy Tan
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I didn't fear failure. I expected failure.
Amy Tan
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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
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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.
Amy Tan
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Hardships can harden even the best person.
Amy Tan
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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.
Amy Tan
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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.
Amy Tan
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Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.
Amy Tan
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I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.
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
Amy Tan
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I was punched breathless by the strongest emotions I have ever felt and they are now stored in my intuition as a writer.
Amy Tan
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How do I create something out of nothing? And how do I create my own life? I think it is by questioning, and saying to myself that there are no absolute truths.
Amy Tan
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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.
Amy Tan
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The life we receive is not always what we choose.
Amy Tan
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And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.
Amy Tan
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To come so far, to lose so much and to find nothing. -Jing-mei
Amy Tan