Amy Tan

Hardships can harden even the best person.

I am ashamed she is ashamed. Because she is my daughter and I am proud of her, and I am her mother but she is not proud of me.

The only thing certain in times of great uncertainty is that people will behave with great strength or weakness, and with very little else in between.

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

My father has asked me to be the fourth corner at the Joy Luck Club. I am to replace my mother, whose seat at the mah jong table has been empty since she died two months ago. My father thinks she was killed by her own thoughts.

Seeing her this last time, I threw myself on her body. And she opened her eyes slowly. I was not scared. I knew she could see me and what she had finally done. So i shut her eyes with my fingers and told her with my heart: I cah see the truth, too. I am strong, too.

Lack of clarity is a writer's truth.

I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?

Auntie Yang is not hard of hearing. She is hard of listening.

It is because I had so much joy that I came to have so much hate.

Why are you attracted only to Chinese nonsense?

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

People look at me as this very, I don't know, Confucius-like wise person — which I'm not. They don't see all the shit that I've been through.

You are beauty, we are beauty, we are divine, unchanged by time.

Kehidupan hanyalah ilusi yang harus kau lepaskan. Ketika makin tua, kau menyadari perubahan posisimu sehubungan dengan kematian. Di masa muda topik kematian adalah filosofis, di usia tiga puluhan topik itu tidak bisa diterima, dan di usia empat puluhan topik itu tidak terhindarkan. Di usia lima puluhan, kau menghadapinya dengan cara-cara yang lebih rasional : mengatur surat wasiat, menghitung aset dan harta warisan, menjelaskan donasi organ tubuhmu, merinci kata-kata yang tepat untuk surat wasiat. Kini di usia enam puluhan, kau kembali jadi filosofis.