Amy Tan Quotes

A psychiatrist does not want you to wake up. He tells you to dream some more, to find the pond and pour more tears into it. And really, he's just another bird drinking from your misery.

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.

how can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?

Now they seemed to be in a contest over who could irritate her more, and she sometimes had to remind herself that teenagers had souls

Hope is the adrenalin of the soul.

The life we receive is not always what we choose.

Hardships can harden even the best person.

Over time, passion wanes, differences don't.

If you are greedy, what is inside you is what makes you always hungry.

I think books were my salvation, they saved me from being miserable.

Your only shame is to have shame.

I started a second novel seven times and I had to throw them away.

It means we're looking one way, while following another. We're for one side and also the other. We mean what we say, but our intentions are different.

We are living in a world where everything is false. The society is like bright paint applied on top of rotten wood.

Only two kinds of daughters, she shouted in Chinese. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!

I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.

With hope, a mind is always free.

In [writing] fiction, every sentence is its own reward.

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.

I did not lose myself all at once.

A Mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place.

Your life is what you see in front of you. -An-mei

But I was no longer sacared. I could see what was inside me. -Lindo

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.

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.

I'd like to be more forgiving. There are times when I've had a hard time forgiving people who have betrayed me.

Those who don't heed the warnings don't live to admit they were stupid not to do so.

Yesterday my daughter said to me, 'My marriage is falling apart.' And now all she can do is watch it falling.

I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn't understand her English, because she was Chinese.

And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind.

Language is the tool of my trade -and I use them all - all the Englishes I grew up with

I've always been a magnet for guilt.

To save myself, I destroyed another, and in doing so, I destroyed myself.

Whenever my mother talks to me, she begins the conversation as if we were already in the middle of an argument.

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

Fate changes when you change your clothes.

You can get sucked into the idea that, 'Gosh, this is impressive. Maybe I should do this. It will look good.' Or 'I'll write like this because it will impress that critic.'

Too many good things all seem the same after a while.

All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. -Ying Ying

Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it - that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.

If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever. -An-mei

To come so far, to lose so much and to find nothing. -Jing-mei

People there only dream that it is China, because if you are Chinese you can never let go of China in your mind.

I won't be what I'm not. -Jing-mei

...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.

I hated the tests the raised hopes and failed expectations.

Why do some memories live only on your tongue or in your nose? Why do others always stay in your heart?

If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too?

While it is good to speak well, it is better to speak the truth.

I felt foolish and tired, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind to discover there was no one there.