100 Famous Quotes By Amy Tan On Luck, Culture, Relationships And More

We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.

Like , Never

  

If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.

  

Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.

  

Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.

  

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?

Like , Never

  

Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.

  

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.

Like

  

I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.

  

Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?

  

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.

Life , Me

  

That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.

  

We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. -Suyuan

  

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.

  

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.

  

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

  

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.

  

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

Think

  

I love and am loved, fully and freely, nothing expected, more than enough received.

  

You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.

  

How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently?

  

But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better. -Jing-mei

Never

  

You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying. -An-mei

Think , Yourself

  

After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?

Past

  

I won't be what I'm not. -Jing-mei

  

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

Life

  

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.

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.

Me

  

Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.

  

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

  

Too many good things all seem the same after a while.

  

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

Never , Think

  

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

  

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

Like

  

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

Think

  

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.

  

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?

Past

  

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.

Life

  

But I was no longer sacared. I could see what was inside me. -Lindo

  

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.

Like

  

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

Time

  

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

  

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.

Life , Think , Time

  

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

  

Only two kinds of daughters, she shouted in Chinese. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!

  

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

  

But I don't have anything left inside of me to figure out where I fit in or what I want. If I want anything, it's to know what's possible to want.

Me

  

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

  

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?

  

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

Never

  

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

  

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

  

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

  

It means we're looking one way, while following another. We're for one side and also the other. We mean what we say, but our intentions are different.

  

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

  

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.

Life , Never , Together

  

They know where happiness lies, not in a cave or a country, but in love and the freedom to give and take what has been there all along.

  

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.

  

Yesterday my daughter said to me, 'My marriage is falling apart.' And now all she can do is watch it falling.

Me

  

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...

Me

  

Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it - that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.

Life

  

With hope, a mind is always free.

  

We are living in a world where everything is false. The society is like bright paint applied on top of rotten wood.

Like

  

And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.

  

I saw a girl complaining that the pain of not being seen was unbearable... Now I have perfect understanding. I have already experienced the worst. After this, there is no worse possible thing.

  

Dementia was like a truth serum.

Like

  

I felt like a rich vagabond who had passed through the world paving my way with gold fairy dust, then realizing too late that the path disintegrated as soon as I passed over it.

Like

  

He has always been politely indifferent. But what's the Chinese word that means indifferent because you can't see any differences?

  

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

  

You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.

Character , Think

  

While it is good to speak well, it is better to speak the truth.

  

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

Me

  

Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don't you learn to play chess." - Ch. 5

Me

  

And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind.

  

All objects exist in a moment of time.

Time

  

...we were like two people standing apart on separate mountain peaks, recklessly leaning forward to throw stones at one another, unaware of the dangerous chasm that separated us.

Like

  

People there only dream that it is China, because if you are Chinese you can never let go of China in your mind.

Never

  

I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents' promiise. This means nothing to you, because to you promises mean nothing... But later, she will forget her promise. She will forget she had a grandmother.

Life

  

I hated the tests the raised hopes and failed expectations." - Two Kinds

  

My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other's meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more.

Never

  

What is a secret wish?" "It is what you want but cannot ask.

  

If you are greedy, what is inside you is what makes you always hungry.

  

...A painting was a translation of the language of my heart.

  

I felt foolish and tired, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind to discover there was no one there.

Me

  

I felt stuck in the bottom of a wishing well. I was desperate to shout what I wanted, but I didn’t know what that was. I knew only what it wasn’t. The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan

  

Now I was a tiger that neither pounced nor lay waiting between the trees. I became an unseen spirit.

  

Yet part of me also thinks the whole idea makes perfect sense. The three of us, leaving our differences behind, stepping on the plane together, sitting side by side, lifting off, moving West to reach the East.

Me , Together

  

Because I think to myself, even today, how can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?

Think

  

Ying-ying, you have tiger eyes. They gather fire in the day. At night they shine golden.

  

The things one had to do in life sometimes had nothing to do with what was fun or convenient.

Life

  

You can't stay in the dark for too long. Something inside you starts to fade, and you become like a starving person, crazy-hungry for light.

Like

  

When you touch a man's nostalgia, he is yours.

  

Hardships can harden even the best person.

  

A few times I invited Ba to visit me from the World of Yin. But other yin friends tell me he is stuck somewhere else, a foggy place where people believe their lies are true.

Me

  

But you can't stay in the dark for so long. Something inside of you starts to fade and you become like a starving person, crazy-hungry for light.

Like

  

I imagine a hundred Chinese Icaruses, molding wings out of earwax. You can't stop people from wishing.

  

I thought about things, the pros and cons. But in the end I would be so confused, because I never believed there was ever any one right answer, yet there were many wrong ones.

Never

  

These are the things I know are true ...