Amy Tan Quotes

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

The life we receive is not always what we choose.

I am a miserable cook but an extremely talented eater.

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. Finding my mother in my father's story and saying good-bye before before I have a chance to know her better.

Can you imagine how it is, to want to be neither inside nor outside, to want to be nowhere and disappear?

...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.

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

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.

It’s my fault she is this way. I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these two things do not mix?

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

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

"The next world is 'segregated'? You can go to the World of Yin only if you're Chinese?"
"No-no! Miss Banner, she not Chinese, she go to Yin World. All depend what you love, what you believe. You love Jesus, go Jesus House. You love Allah, go Allah Land. You love sleep, go sleep."
"What if you don't believe in anything for sure before you die?"
"Then you go big place, like Disneyland, many places can go try — you like, you decide. No charge, of course."