Amy Tan citations

Page 2

“I won't be what I'm not.
-Jing-mei”

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

“too much happiness always overflowed into tears of sorrow.”

“For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.”

“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.”

“Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“I think now that fate is half shaped by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. You have to pay attention to what you lost. You have to undo the expectation.”

“And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.”

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

“What is the past but what we choose to remember?”

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

“Chaos is the penance for leisure.”

“There's no hope. There's no reason to keep trying.
Because you must. This is not hope. Not reason. This is your fate. This is your life, what you must do.”

“Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.”

“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.”

“I was no longer scared. I could see what was inside me.”

“We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.”

“You can have pride in what you do each day, but not arrogance in what you were born with.”

“If I look upon my whole life, I cannot think of another time when I felt more comfortable: when I had no worries, fears, or desires, when my life seemed as soft and lovely as lying inside a cocoon of rose silk.”

“Only two kind of daughters. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter!”

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

“But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.
-Ying Ying”