Amy Tan Quotes

They know where happiness lies, not in a cave or a country, but in love and the freedom to give and take what has been there all along.

I love and am loved, fully and freely, nothing expected, more than enough received.

Why do you think you are missing something you never had?

I felt like a rich vagabond who had passed through the world paving my way with gold fairy dust, then realizing too late that the path disintegrated as soon as I passed over it.

You can't have intentions without consequences. The question is, who pays for the consequences? Saving fish from drowning. Same thing. Who’s saved? Who’s not?

Can you imagine how it is, to want to be neither inside nor outside, to want to be nowhere and disappear?

I like to go somewhere where I learn something I didn't know before, like the Dry Tortugas between Florida and Cuba.

I don't steer clear of genres. I simply haven't steered myself toward some of them.

My mother didn't teach me lessons about being Chinese as strongly as she did the notion of who I was as a female.

My mother would say it is literally ghost writers who come to me.

I saw a girl complaining that the pain of not being seen was unbearable... Now I have perfect understanding. I have already experienced the worst. After this, there is no worse possible thing.

A mother is always the beggining. She is how things begin.

Don't think too much. That makes you believe you have more choices than you do. Then you mind becomes confused.

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

Everyone must dream. We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that's like saying you can never change your fate. Isn't that true?

I had thus learned to push down my feelings, to force myself to not care, to do nothing and let things happen, come what may.

Why would any writer in her right mind ever consider making a movie instead? That's like going from being a monk or a nun to serving as a camp counselor for hundreds of problem children.

When a husband stops paying attention to the garden, he's thinking of pulling up roots.

When the anesthesia of love wears off, you suffer the pain of consequence.

I now lived in an invisible place made of my own dwindling breath, and because no one else could see it, they could not yank me out of it.

Believe me, daughter, there is nothing worse than having your own family member out for revenge.

You can't stay in the dark for too long. Something inside you starts to fade, and you become like a starving person, crazy-hungry for light.

But you can't stay in the dark for so long. Something inside of you starts to fade and you become like a starving person, crazy-hungry for light.

What is the past but what we choose to remember?

Our love would be solace, companionship, and the mending of wounds.

...and it's ridiculous that anyone would praise a child for standing with arms spread out on a wooden cross, as if she were Jesus's dead sister wearing a checkerboard tablecloth.

He simply translated what was in LuLing's heart: her better intentions, her hopes.

It's a luxury being a writer because all you ever think about is life.

It felt like all the truth got whitewashed with fake happiness, " she said, "only it was not happy and it was worse than fake. It was dangerous

I am a miserable cook but an extremely talented eater.

The best life you can have as you get into old age is good food, good teeth to eat it with, and few worries when you go to bed at night.

Free time was the most precious time, when you should be doing what you loved, or at least slowing down enough to remember what made your life worthwhile and happy.

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.

I wanted to capture what language ability tests could never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts.

What are ghosts if not the hope that love continues beyond our ordinary senses? If ghosts are a delusion, then let me be deluded.

Auntie Yang is not hard of hearing. She is hard of listening.

Forever did not mean what it once had. Forever was what changed inevitably over time.

A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.

Whenever I'm with my [teenager] I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.

I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.

If you can't change your fate change your attitude.

No one can travel your own road for you you must travel it for yourself. My faith in this stems from my childhood. I grew up in a family with a system of religious beliefs handed down to me.