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I can never remember things I didn't understand in the first place.

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
Never
Understanding
Understand
Didn
Place
Remember
Firsts
First
Things

More quotes by Amy Tan

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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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I have a writer's memory, which makes everything worse than maybe it actually was.
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All objects exist in a moment of time.
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I would still like to have that luxury, to be able to just sit and draw for hours and hours and hours. In a way, that's what I do as a writer.
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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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Yet part of me also thinks the whole idea makes perfect sense. The three of us, leaving our differences behind, stepping on the plane together, sitting side by side, lifting off, moving West to reach the East.
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Only two kinds of daughters, she shouted in Chinese. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!
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...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.
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No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.
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I love and am loved, fully and freely, nothing expected, more than enough received.
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Too many good things all seem the same after a while.
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When you lose your face..., it is like dropping your necklace down a well. The only way you can get it back is to fall in after it.
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A Mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place.
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There's no hope. There's no reason to keep trying. Because you must. This is not hope. Not reason. This is your fate. This is your life, what you must do.
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But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter. -Ying Ying
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You see what power is holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them.
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Now you see,' said the turtle, drifting back into the pond, 'why it is useless to cry. Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else's joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.
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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.
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People think it's a terrible tragedy when somebody has Alzheimer's. But in my mother's case, it's different. My mother has been unhappy all her life. For the first time in her life, she's happy.
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Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.
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