Amy Tan Quotes

Free time was the most precious time, when you should be doing what you loved, or at least slowing down enough to remember what made your life worthwhile and happy.

When you lose your face..., it is like dropping your necklace down a well. The only way you can get it back is to fall in after it.

. . .the world is not a place but the vastness of the soul. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true. . .And believing in ghosts - that's believing that love never dies. If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find them anytime with our hundred secret senses.

These are the things I know are true ...

On the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mother's case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow.

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

After the gold was removed from my body I felt lighter, more free. They say this is what happens if you lack metal. You begin to think as an independent person.

We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable.
-Suyuan

Dementia was like a truth serum.

too much happiness always overflowed into tears of sorrow.

I was no longer scared. I could see what was inside me.

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.

"When you are told, "It was meant to be," ask, "Who meant it? What does it really mean?" Is someone trying to make you accept an undesirable situation or one in which you have doubts? When you are told, "Shit happens," remember that plenty of other things happen as well, such as generosity, forgiveness, ambiguity, and uncertainty. When you are told, "It's simply fate," ask yourself, "What is simple about it? What are the alternatives of fate? What is fate's opposite?

But now that I am old, moving every year closer to the end of my life, I also feel closer to the beginning. And I remember everything that happened that day becasue it has happened many times in my life. The same innocence, trust, and restlessness; the wonder, fear, and lonliness. How I lost myself.
I remember all these things. And tonight, on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, I also remember what I asked the Moon Lady so long ago. I wished to be found.

"And when I say that is certainly true, that our marriage is over. I know what else she will say: "Then you must save it."
And even though I know it's hopeless- there's absolutely nothing left to save-I'm afraid if I tell her that, she'll still persuade me to try."