Amy Tan Quotes

You see what power is – holding someone else’s fear
in your hand and showing it to them

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.

"A pious man explained to his followers: 'It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. "Don't be scared," I tell those fishes. "I am saving you from drowning." Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price. With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes."

I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter’s tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.

Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.

Now you see,' said the turtle, drifting back into the pond, 'why it is useless to cry. Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else's joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.

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

The things one had to do in life sometimes had nothing to do with what was fun or convenient.

I've long thought about how life is influenced by death, how it influences what you believe in and what you look for. Yes, I think I was pushed in a way to write this book by certain spirits — the yin people — in my life. They've always been there, I wouldn't say to help, but to kick me in the ass to write. ...Yin people is the term Kwan uses, because "ghosts" is politically incorrect. People have such terrible assumptions about ghosts — you know, phantoms that haunt you, that make you scared, that turn the house upside down. Yin people are not in our living presence but are around, and kind of guide you to insights. Like in Las Vegas when the bells go off, telling you you've hit the jackpot. Yin people ring the bells, saying, "Pay attention." And you say, "Oh, I see now." Yet I'm a fairly skeptical person. I'm educated, I'm reasonably sane, and I know that this subject is fodder for ridicule. ... To write the book, I had to put that aside. As with any book. I go through the anxiety, "What will people think of me for writing something like this?" But ultimately, I have to write what I have to write about, including the question of life continuing beyond our ordinary senses.

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?

All objects exist in a moment of time.

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.

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.

I ask myself, How can I relax? How can I let go of everything that's happened? You need complete trust to do that.

I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I had placed them.