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There are a lot of people who think that's what's needed to be successful is always being right, always being careful, always picking the right path.
- Amy Tan
#Always
#Path
#People
#Right Path
#Right
I saw my mother in a different light. We all need to do that. You have to be displaced from what's comfortable and routine, and then you get to see things with fresh eyes, with new eyes.
- Amy Tan
#Eyes
#Light
#Mother
#New
#Routine
Until the age of five, my parents spoke to me in Chinese or a combination of Chinese and English, but they didn't force me to speak Mandarin. In retrospect, this was sad, because they believed that my chance of doing well in America hinged on my fluency in English. Later, as an adult, I wanted to learn Chinese.
- Amy Tan
#Age
#Chance
#Me
#Parents
#Sad
Poetry. I read Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Jane Hirschfield. I like to read Billy Collins out loud.
- Amy Tan
#Like
#Loud
#Out
#Poetry
#Read
I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.
- Amy Tan
#Grateful
#Ideas
#Imagination
#Myself
I grew up with Bible stories, which are like fairy tales, because my father was a minister. We heard verses and prayers every day. I liked the gorier Bible stories. I did have a book of Chinese fairy tales. All the people except the elders looked like Italians. But we were not a family that had fiction books.
- Amy Tan
#Bible
#Day
#Every Day
#Family
#Father
When you read about the lives of other people, people of different circumstances or similar circumstances, you are part of their lives for that moment. You inhabit their lives, and you feel what they're feeling, and that is compassion. If we see that reading does allow us that, we see how absolutely essential reading is.
- Amy Tan
#Compassion
#Feel
#Moment
#People
#See
God, life changes faster than you think.
- Amy Tan
#God
#Life Changes
#Life
#Than
#Think
It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success.
- Amy Tan
#Attack
#Conformity
#Rebellion
#Success
My mother believed in curses, karma, good luck, bad luck, feng shui. Her amorphous set of beliefs showed me you can pick and choose the qualities of your philosophy, based on what works for you.
- Amy Tan
#Bad
#Good Luck
#Good
#Luck
#Me
My grandmother. She's someone I never met, and I would've loved to have met her. She's been a huge influence on our entire family, not just me. She is a mystery. It's not clear exactly what about her is truth and myth.
- Amy Tan
#Family
#Influence
#Me
#Mystery
#Truth
Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone.
- Amy Tan
#Gift
#Giving
#Privilege
#Story
#Yourself
My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten.
- Amy Tan
#Expectations
#High
#Me
#Parents
#Time
I felt ashamed of being different and ashamed of feeling that way.
- Amy Tan
#Ashamed
#Being Different
#Feeling
#Way
I have survivor skills. Some of that is superficial - what I present to people outwardly - but what makes people resilient is the ability to find humour and irony in situations that would otherwise overpower you.
- Amy Tan
#Ability
#Find
#Irony
#People
#Survivor
There is this myth, that America is a melting pot, but what happens in assimilation is that we end up deliberately choosing the American things - hot dogs and apple pie - and ignoring the Chinese offerings.
- Amy Tan
#America
#American
#Apple
#End
#Hot
I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.
- Amy Tan
#Face
#Lose
#Myself
#Pain
#Water
In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.
- Amy Tan
#America
#Circumstances
#Keep
#Nobody
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.
- Amy Tan
#Inspiration
#Kindness
#Universe
#Who
I didn't fear failure. I expected failure.
- Amy Tan
#Expected
#Failure
#Fear
Our uniqueness makes us special, makes perception valuable - but it can also make us lonely. This loneliness is different from being 'alone': You can be lonely even surrounded by people. The feeling I'm talking about stems from the sense that we can never fully share the truth of who we are. I experienced this acutely at an early age.
- Amy Tan
#Age
#Alone
#Loneliness
#People
#Truth
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.
- Amy Tan
#Amazing
#Feelings
#Me
#Power
#Words
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