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My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes. She sees those who have died and now dwell in the world of Yin, ghosts who leave the mists just to visit her kitchen on Balboa Street in San Francisco.

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
Died
Dwell
Streets
Visit
Leave
Believes
Eyes
Sister
Eye
Kitchen
Mists
Believe
Ghost
Francisco
World
Sees
Ghosts
Street
Mist

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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.
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I think Kwan intended to show me the world is not a place but the vastness of the sou. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true....If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find them anytime with our hundred secret senses.
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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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how can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?
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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.
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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.
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It is because I had so much joy that I came to have so much hate.
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Now I was a tiger that neither pounced nor lay waiting between the trees. I became an unseen spirit.
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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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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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I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn't understand her English, because she was Chinese.
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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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