Amy Tan Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
-
“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.”
-- Amy TanSource : Edward Sapir, David Goodman Mandelbaum (1985). “Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture and Personality”, p.162, Univ of California Press
-
“I am fascinated by language in daily life: the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.”
-- Amy TanSource : Amy Tan (2003). “The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life”, p.181, Penguin
-
“So sad! This 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?”
-- Amy Tan -
“If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.”
-- Amy TanSource : Amy Tan (2003). “The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life”, p.47, Penguin
-
-
“I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.”
-- Amy Tan -
“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.”
-- Amy Tan -
“It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success.”
-- Amy Tan -
-
“From what I have observed, when the anesthesia of love wears off, there is always the pain of consequences. You don't have to be stupid to marry the wrong man.”
-- Amy Tan -
“We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.”
-- Amy TanSource : "The Hundred Secret Senses". Book by Amy Tan, 1995.
-
“I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever.”
-- Amy Tan -
-
“Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.”
-- Amy TanSource : Amy Tan (2006). “The Kitchen God's Wife”, p.112, Penguin
-
“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.”
-- Amy Tan -
“I have loved works of fiction precisely for their illusions, for the author's sleight-of-hand in showing me the magic, what appeared in the right hand but not in the left...”
-- Amy Tan -
“You see what power is holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them.”
-- Amy Tan -
-
“Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.”
-- Amy Tan -
“You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.”
-- Amy TanSource : Amy Tan (2005). “Saving Fish from Drowning”, p.267, Penguin
-
“Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.”
-- Amy Tan -
“That is the nature of endings, it seems. They never end. When all the missing pieces of your life are found, put together with glue of memory and reason, there are more pieces to be found.”
-- Amy Tan -
-
“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.”
-- Amy Tan -
“I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.”
-- Amy Tan -
“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.”
-- Amy Tan -
-
“It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.”
-- Amy Tan -
“Words to me were magic. You could say a word and it could conjure up all kinds of images or feelings or a chilly sensation or whatever. It was amazing to me that words had this power.”
-- Amy TanSource : "Author of The Joy Luck Club". The Academy of Achievement, www.achievement.org. June 28, 1996.
-
“Sure I loved him - too much. And he loved me, only not enough. I just want someone who thinks I'm number one in his life. I'm not willing to accept emotional scraps anymore.”
-- Amy Tan -
“And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation.”
-- Amy TanSource : Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club”, p.40, Penguin
-
-
“I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary; we did not have any books in the house.”
-- Amy TanSource : "Author of The Joy Luck Club". The Academy of Achievement, www.achievement.org. June 28, 1996.
-
“How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently?”
-- Amy TanSource : Amy Tan (1992). “The Kitchen God's wife”, Thorndike Pr
You may also like:
-
Alice Walker
Author -
Amy Chua
Professor -
Barbara Kingsolver
Novelist -
Chang-Rae Lee
Novelist -
Dave Barry
Author -
Gish Jen
Writer -
Jhumpa Lahiri
Author -
John Steinbeck
Author -
Khaled Hosseini
Novelist -
Lisa See
Writer -
Maxine Hong Kingston
Author -
Maya Angelou
Author -
Mitch Albom
Author -
Pearl S. Buck
Writer -
Richard Rodriguez
Writer -
Ridley Pearson
Author -
Sandra Cisneros
Writer -
Stephen King
Author -
Sue Monk Kidd
Writer -
Toni Morrison
Novelist