Quotes from Amy Tan

It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.

I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.

God, life changes faster than you think.

I felt ashamed of being different and ashamed of feeling that way.

Our uniqueness makes us special, makes perception valuable - but it can also make us lonely. This loneliness is different from being 'alone': You can be lonely even surrounded by people. The feeling I'm talking about stems from the sense that we can never fully share the truth of who we are. I experienced this acutely at an early age.

I write because I know that one day I will die, and thus I should experience as many deliberate observations, careful thoughts, wild ideas, and deep emotions as I can before that day occurs.

I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength..."strongest wind cannot be seen."

I think I've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success.

The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.

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.

I just feel very lucky to be able to write fiction because I think, otherwise, I would have had to spend a fortune on a psychiatrist - and I still wouldn't get 1/100th of what I get writing fiction.

I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.

My breakfast is usually a wholegrain cereal or porridge, with walnuts sprinkled in it, berries, a tablespoon of honey, and chia seeds. I have coffee and a little cherry juice with seltzer. I have a seat by the window, and I look out at the view.

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

For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.

Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.

wisdom is like a bottomless pond. You throw stones in and they sink into darkness and dissolve. Her eyes looking back do not reflect anything. I think this to myself even though I love my daughter. She and I have shared the same body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore.

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

too much happiness always overflowed into tears of sorrow.

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

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

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

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

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.