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I think I've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success.

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
Hope
Rejection
Father
Prepared
Always
Failure
Think
Afraid
Thinking
Brother
Somebody
Since
Success
Deaths

More quotes by Amy Tan

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And when I say that is certainly true, that our marriage is over. I know what else she will say: Then you must save it. And even though I know it's hopeless- there's absolutely nothing left to save-I'm afraid if I tell her that, she'll still persuade me to try.
Amy Tan
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So much of history is mystery. We don't know what is lost forever, what will surface again. All objects exist in a moment of time. And that fragment of time is preserved or lost or found in mysterious ways. Mystery is a wonderful part of life.
Amy Tan
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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.
Amy Tan
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When my daughter looks at me, she sees a small old lady. That is because she sees only with her outside eyes. She has no chuming, no inside knowing of things. If she had chuming she would see a tiger lady. And she would have careful fear.
Amy Tan
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I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary we did not have any books in the house.
Amy Tan
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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.
Amy Tan
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I have survivor skills. Some of that is superficial - what I present to people outwardly - but what makes people resilient is the ability to find humour and irony in situations that would otherwise overpower you.
Amy Tan
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You can never be an artist if your work comes without effort. That is the problem with modernink from a bottle. You do not have to think. You simply write what is swimming on the top of your brain. And the top is nothing but pond scum, dead leaves, and mosquito spawn.
Amy Tan
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Sometimes you change to survive, and some things you don't give up, or you're too prideful, and then you think well, what's pride? Is it a good thing? Maybe it's a bad thing. That's what I look at in my life. It's always a question in my life I look at, and I never find the answer, because if I did, probably I wouldn't have books to write.
Amy Tan
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I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.
Amy Tan
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That is the saddest part when you lose someone you love - that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost? Maybe you lost more maybe less, then thousand different things that come from your memory or imagination - and you do not know which is which, which was true, which is false.
Amy Tan
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It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.
Amy Tan
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I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.
Amy Tan
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I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength...strongest wind cannot be seen.
Amy Tan
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That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.
Amy Tan
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But I don't have anything left inside of me to figure out where I fit in or what I want. If I want anything, it's to know what's possible to want.
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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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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I saw a girl complaining that the pain of not being seen was unbearable... Now I have perfect understanding. I have already experienced the worst. After this, there is no worse possible thing.
Amy Tan
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I have always known a thing before it happens.
Amy Tan