Amy Tan > Quotes

“We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.”
― Amy Tan, The Hundred Secret Senses

“If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.”
― Amy Tan

“Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.”
― Amy Tan, The Kitchen God's Wife

“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?”
― Amy Tan, The Hundred Secret Senses

“Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“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

“Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.”
― Amy Tan, Saving Fish from Drowning

“Now you see,' said the turtle, drifting back into the pond, 'why it is useless to cry. 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.”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“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, The Hundred Secret Senses

“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.”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable.
-Suyuan”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. the pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and giver her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind.
-Lindo”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh.
-An-mei”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“Isn't that how it is when you must decide with your heart? You are not just choosing one thing over another. You are choosing what you want. And you are also choosing what somebody else does not want, and all the consequences that follow. You can tell yourself, That's not my problem, but those words do not wash the trouble away. Maybe it is no longer a problem in your life. But it is always a problem in your heart.”
― Amy Tan, The Kitchen God's Wife

“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 Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over.
-Rose”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better.
-Jing-mei”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“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

“You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.”
― Amy Tan, Saving Fish from Drowning

“Each person is made of five different elements, she told me.
Too much fire and you had a bad temper. That was like my father, whom my mother always critized for his cigarette habit and who always shouted back that she should feel guilty that he didn't let my mother speak her mind.
Too little wood and you bent too quickly to listen to other people's ideas, unable to stand on your own. This was like my Auntie An-mei.
Too much water and you flowed in too many different directions. like myself.”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“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, Saving Fish from Drowning

“You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying.
-An-mei”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently?”
― Amy Tan, The Kitchen God's Wife

“I won't be what I'm not.
-Jing-mei”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“A girl is like a young tree, she said. You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight. But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first strong wind. And then you will be like a weed, growing wild in any direction, running along the ground until someone pulls you out and throws you away. ”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter