Quotes from Amy Tan

Quiero que nuestro amor sea tan grande que nos duela por dentro

I think about our marriage. The weft of our seventeen years together was so easily torn apart. Our love was as ordinary as the identical welcome mats found in the suburbs we grew up in. The fact that our bodies, our thoughts, our hearts had once moved in rhythm with each other had only fooled us into thinking we were special.

What I realized about the dreamland, however, was the power it once held simply by being withheld from me. It created yearning—and also purpose. It demanded the best of me to meet my purpose: diligence, intelligence, and an understanding of

That is the saddest part when you lose someone you love—that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost? Maybe you lost more, maybe less, ten thousand different things that come from your memory or imagination—and you do not know which is which, which was true, which is false.

She loved cooperative vegetables.

Now that our marriage is over, I know what love is. It's a trick on the brain, the adrenal glands releasing endorphins. It floods the cells that transmit worry and better sense, drowns them with biochemical bliss. You can know all these things about love, yet it remains irresistible, as beguiling as the floating arms of long sleep.

It was our fate and our natures, flawed and wounded, that brought us together - Violet Minturn

I'm not consciously hiding anything.' After Ruth said that she wondered whether it was true. Then again, who revealed everything - the irritation, the fears? How tiresome that would be.

When something that violent hits you, you can't help but lose your balance and fall. And after you pick yourself up, you realize you can't trust anybody to save you—not your husband, not your mother, not God. So what can you do to stop yourself from tilting and falling all over again?

Pero no puedes permanecer en la oscuridad durante mucho tiempo. Algo dentro de ti empieza a desvanecerse y entonces te vuelves como una persona hambrienta, desesperadamente ansiosa de luz.

I feed myself with the old grief.

I hope you don't suffer forever from keeping love from your heart

It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success.

Our meeting each other could not possibly be as random as two leaves from two trees being blown together.

You can't have luck when someone else has skills

Never show a weapon before you have to use it

And now at the airport, after shaking hands with everybody, waving good-bye, I think about all the different ways we leave people in this world. Cheerily waving good-bye to some at airports, knowing we'll never see each other again. Leaving others on the side of the road, hoping that we will.

I remember the day when I finally knew a genuine thought and could follow where it went.

In two years' time, my scar became pale and shinny and I had no memory of my mother. 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.

By then I didn't have enough feeling left in my body to cry.

I realized then that we miss so much of life while we are part of it. We fail to see ninety percent of the glories of nature, for to do so would require vision that is simultaneously telescopic and microscopic.

Then again, it seemed my mother was always displeased with all her friends, with me, and even with my father. Something was always missing. Something always needed improving. Something was not in balance. This one or that had too much of one element, not enough of another.

Llevaba un hermoso vestido rojo, pero lo que vi era incluso más valioso. Yo era fuerte. Era pura. Albergaba en mi interior unos pensamientos genuinos que nadie podría arrebatarme jamás. Yo era como el viento.

I felt as if I were running in a labyrinth, chasing after something I could not see yet knew was important. I sensed it was just ahead, and then it would go around a corner, and I would be lost. I would have to decide what to do next, where to go, and what I needed to get out of that confusing place. If I stopped running and stood still, I would be accepting that what I had was all I would ever have. And then I would no longer be lost, because there would be nowhere else to go.