Quotes from Amy Tan

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

When my daughter looks at me, she sees a small old lady. That is because she sees only with her outside eyes. She has no chuming , no inside knowing of things. If she had chuming , she would see a tiger lady. And she would have careful fear.

He asked if he could recite a poem he had written that morning: 'You speak,' he said, 'the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset. I want to follow its trail to eternity.

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

For all these years I kept my mouth closed so selfish desires would not fall out. And because I remained quiet for so long now my daughter does not hear me... All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. And because I moved so secretly now my daughter does not see me... We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing; unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.

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.

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

I take a few quick sips. This is really good. And I mean it. I have never tasted tea like this. It is smooth, pungent, and instantly addicting. This is from Grand Auntie, my mother explains. She told me 'If I buy the cheap tea, then I am saying that my whole life has not been worth something better.' A few years ago she bought it for herself. One hundred dollars a pound. You're kidding. I take another sip. It tastes even better.

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.

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.

So much of history is mystery. We don't know what is lost forever, what will surface again. All objects exist in a moment of time. And that fragment of time is preserved or lost or found in mysterious ways. Mystery is a wonderful part of 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.

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

Even if I had expected it, even if I had known what I was going to do with my life, it would have knocked the wind out of me. 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?

Dementia was like a truth serum.

I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect for others, and eventually thought neither of us knew it at the time, chess games... Come from the South, blow from the wind -- poom!-- North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen.

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