Al Keller

“The way you wear your hat,
The way you sip your tea,
The mem'ry of all that --
No, no! They can't take that away from me!”
― Ira Gershwin

“Thanks to my mother, I was raised to have a morbid imagination. When I was a child, she often talked about death as warning, as an unavoidable matter of fact. Little Debbie's mom down the block might say, 'Honey, look both ways before crossing the street.' My mother's version: 'You don't look, you get smash flat like sand dab.' (Sand dabs were the cheap fish we bought live in the market, distinguished in my mind by their two eyes affixed on one side of their woebegone cartoon faces.)

The warnings grew worse, depending on the danger at hand. Sex education, for example, consisted of the following advice: 'Don't ever let boy kiss you. You do, you can't stop. Then you have baby. You put baby in garbage can. Police find you, put you in jail, then you life over, better just kill youself.”
― Amy Tan, The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life

“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

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