Amy Tan citations

Page 3

“It was a distorted form of inverse logic: If hopes never come true, then hope for what you don't want.”

“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?”

“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.”

“Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this. Everyone else want best quality. You thinking different.”

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

“When you already believe something, how can you suddenly stop? When you are a loyal friend, how can you no longer be one?”

“Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine.”

“I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control.”

“I don't feel the need to be a role model, it's just something that's been thrust upon me. Teachers and a lot of Asian-American organizations, for example, say to me, "We need you to come and speak to us because you're a role model."… Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden. Someone who writes fiction is not necessarily writing a depiction of any generalized group, they're writing a very specific story.”

“Now that I'm angry at Harold, it's hard to remember what was so remarkable about him.”

“After the gold was removed from my body I felt lighter, more free. They say this is what happens if you lack metal. You begin to think as an independent person.”

“I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?”

“For woman is yin, the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.”

“External success has to do with people who may see me as a model, or an example, or a representative. As much as I may dislike or want to reject that responsibility, this is something that comes with public success. It's important to give others a sense of hope that it is possible and you can come from really different places in the world and find your own place in the world that's unique for yourself.”

“One relative felt that the story of my grandmother should not have been revealed. My grandmother was the woman (in The Kitchen God's Wife) who had been raped, forced to be a concubine, and finally killed herself. My mother, though, got equally angry at the relative and said, "For so many years, I carried this shame on my back, and my mother suffered, because she couldn't say anything to anybody." And she said, "It's not too late; tell the world, tell the world what happened to her."”

“It is because I had so much joy that I came to have so much hate.”

“On the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mother's case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow.”

“I saw what I had been fighting for: it was for me, a scared child…”

“That was the night, in the kitchen, that I realized I was no better than who I was… And I no longer felt angry at Waverly. I felt tired and foolish, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind and discover there was no one there.”

“You see what power is – holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them.”

“Look at this face. Do you see my foolish hope?”

“I was writing for businesses. I think my mother was a little skeptical in the beginning, but fortunately, as a free-lance writer I was successful almost immediately. And so she was very proud, because she measured success in terms of money, which is what I started to do as well. My goal then, became to increase the amount of money that I made each month. Not simply each year, but each month — I mean, talk about pressure — to have more billable hours each month. So that by the end of my third year of being a free-lance writer, I was billing 90 hours a week. I had no time to sleep. I had no life. People said I was crazy, that I was a workaholic. And I couldn't understand how it was that I had these wonderful clients, and I was making all this money, and I wasn't happy and I didn't feel successful. That's when I started to write fiction.”

“I had new thoughts, willful thoughts, or rather thoughts filled with lots of won'ts. I won't let her change me, I promised myself. I won't be what I'm not.”

“Why are you attracted only to Chinese nonsense?”

“My mother had a look on her face that I'll never forget. It was one of complete despair and horror, for losing Bing, for being so foolish as to think she could use faith to change fate.”

“Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies.”

“Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.”

“I remember wondering why it was that eating something good could make me feel so terrible, while vomiting something terrible could make me feel so good.”