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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

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Amy Tan
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: February 19
Essayist
Film Writer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Oakland
California
Amy Ruth Tan
Born
Swimming
Away
Shared
Part
Fish
Body
Fishes
Ever
Mines
Mind
Mine
Love
Daughter
Sprang
Like
Since
Slippery

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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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If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever. -An-mei
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I felt stuck in the bottom of a wishing well. I was desperate to shout what I wanted, but I didn’t know what that was. I knew only what it wasn’t. The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan
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I have always known a thing before it happens.
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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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We are the kind of people who obsess over one word... but we have only one shot to get it right in concert. It was hard the first time I practiced with them. I was so nervous that my vocal chords were paralyzed for about a half-hour.
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You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying. -An-mei
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Memory feeds imagination.
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For woman is yin, the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.
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Dementia was like a truth serum.
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No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.
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And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.
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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.
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The life we receive is not always what we choose.
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You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.
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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.
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We are living in a world where everything is false. The society is like bright paint applied on top of rotten wood.
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I AM A PERSON WHO THINKS ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE SPIRIT WHEN I WRITE. I THINK ABOUT WHAT CAN'T BE KNOWN AND ONLY IMAGINED. I OFTEN SENSE A SPIRIT OR FORCE OR MEANING BEYOND MYSELF. I LEAVE IT OPEN AS TO WHAT THE SPIRIT IS, BUT I CONTINUE TO MAKE GUESSES.
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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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You write a book and you hope somebody will go out and pay $24.95 for what you've just said. I think books were my salvation. Books saved me from being miserable.
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