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I always thought it mattered, to know what is the worst possible thing that can happen to you, to know how you can avoid it, to not be drawn by the magic of the unspeakable.

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
Possible
Happens
Mattered
Thought
Unspeakable
Thing
Drawn
Always
Avoid
Magic
Worst
Happen

More quotes by Amy Tan

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Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.
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I wanted to write stories for myself. At first it was purely an aesthetic thing about craft. I just wanted to become good at the art of something. And writing was very private.
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I can never remember things I didn't understand in the first place.
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I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.
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You don't care what people think. You don't see your beloved's faults, the slight stinginess, the bit of carelessness, the occasional streak of meanness. You don't mind that he is beneath you socially, educationally, financially, and morally--that's the worst, I think, deficient morals. (Saving Fish From Drowning)
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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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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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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.
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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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People there only dream that it is China, because if you are Chinese you can never let go of China in your mind.
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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I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.
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If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.
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Don't think too much. That makes you believe you have more choices than you do. Then you mind becomes confused.
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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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.
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Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don't you learn to play chess. - Ch. 5
Amy Tan
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My mother didn't teach me lessons about being Chinese as strongly as she did the notion of who I was as a female.
Amy Tan
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I have always known a thing before it happens.
Amy Tan
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I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.
Amy Tan