Top 400 Amy Tan Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “In the hands of a different reader, the same story can be a different story.”

— Amy Tan

252. “I started a second novel seven times and I had to throw them away.”

— Amy Tan

253. “If I stopped running and stood still, I would be accepting that what I had was all I would ever have. And then I would no longer be lost, because there would nowhere else to go.”

— Amy Tan

254. “I am a miserable cook but an extremely talented eater.”

— Amy Tan

255. “I often reread passages of “Lolita” for its exquisite language. To me, “Lolita” has no message, no purpose, other than to exist as a marvel of literary creation. It has wit, intelligence and style. It pointedly makes no attempt to serve a higher moral purpose, and previous attempts by critics to find one have proven ludicrous. The annotated edition is accompanied by a brilliant afterword by Nabokov that is a lucid reminder of the pure joy of writing, its interplay with life.”

— Amy Tan

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

— Amy Tan

257. “Why would any writer in her right mind ever consider making a movie instead? That’s like going from being a monk or a nun to serving as a camp counselor for hundreds of problem children.”

— Amy Tan

258. “I realized then that we miss so much of life while we are part of it. We fail to see ninety percent of the glories of nature, for to do so would require vision that is simultaneously telescopic and microscopic.”

— Amy Tan

259. “Was it a craving for salt, or for pain?”

— Amy Tan

260. “How can I argue with someone who makes no sense?”

— Amy Tan

261. “I hope you don’t suffer forever from keeping love from your heart.”

— Amy Tan

262. “Never show a weapon before you have to use it.”

— Amy Tan

263. “A few times I invited Ba to visit me from the World of Yin. But other yin friends tell me he is stuck somewhere else, a foggy place where people believe their lies are true.”

— Amy Tan

264. “Why did I need to see someone else’s bad luck? To feel glad it was not mine? To scare myself into thinking it still might be?”

— Amy Tan

265. “The moment is altered as soon as I try to capture it, so for me, it’s impossible.” How true, I thought. Moments are gone as soon as you think about them.”

— Amy Tan

266. “And all that talk about the breakup being good for us- who am I trying to fool? I’m cut loose, untethered, not belonging to anything or anybody.”

— Amy Tan

267. “When a husband stops paying attention to the garden, he’s thinking of pulling up roots.”

— Amy Tan

268. “I made a promise to myself: I would always remember my parents’ wishes, but I would never forget myself.”

— Amy Tan

269. “Auntie had a tongue like hungry scissors eating silk cloth.”

— Amy Tan

270. “So this is what my mother-in-law taught me: To protect my husband so he would protect me. To fear him and think this was respect.”

— Amy Tan

271. “Jane Eyre taught me that loneliness had more to do with being misunderstood than being alone.”

— Amy Tan

272. “I was returning with myself whole and unbroken – limbs, mind, and spirit. I had discarded pride, that useless burden of self-importance.”

— Amy Tan

273. “Chinese people do many things,” she said simply. “Chinese people do business, do medicine, do painting. Not lazy like American people. We do torture. Best torture.”

— Amy Tan

274. “A moment is not the same as time.”

— Amy Tan

275. “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.”

— Amy Tan

276. “So we decided to hold parties and pretend each week had become the new year. Each week we could forget past wrongs done to us. We weren’t allowed to think a bad thought. We feasted, we laughed, we played games, lost and won, we told the best stories. And each week, we could hope to be lucky. That hope was our only joy.”

— Amy Tan

277. “I was like that wife of Kitchen God. Nobody worshipped her either. He got all the excuses. He got all the credit. She was forgotten.”

— Amy Tan

278. “I was born in the year of the Tiger. It was a very bad year to be born, a very good year to be a Tiger.”

— Amy Tan

279. “She said that if I listened to her, later I would know what she knew: where true words came from, always from up high, above everything else. And if I didn’t listen to her, she said my ear would bend too easily to other people, all saying words that had no lasting meaning, because they came from the bottom of their hearts, where their own desires lived, a place where I could not belong.”

— Amy Tan

280. “Then again, it seemed my mother was always displeased with all her friends, with me, and even with my father. Something was always missing. Something always needed improving. Something was not in balance. This one or that had too much of one element, not enough of another.”

— Amy Tan

281. “In two years’ time, my scar became pale and shinny and I had no memory of my mother. That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.”

— Amy Tan

282. “She loved cooperative vegetables.”

— Amy Tan

283. “I am crying now, sobbing and laughing at the same time, seeing but not understanding this loyalty to my mother.”

— Amy Tan

284. “The gray-green surface changes to the bright colors of our three images, sharpening and deepening all at once. And although we don’t speak, I know we all see it: Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished wish.”

— Amy Tan

285. “How to obey parents and listen to your mother’s mind. How not to show your own thoughts, to put your feelings behind your face so you can take advantage of hidden opportunities. Why easy things are not worth pursuing. How to know your own worth and polish it, never flashing it around like a cheap ring. Why Chinese thinking is best.”

— Amy Tan

286. “I imagine a hundred Chinese Icaruses, molding wings out of earwax. You can’t stop people from wishing.”

— Amy Tan

287. “My mother knows how to hit a nerve. And the pain I feel is worse than any other kind of misery. Because what she does always comes as a shock, exactly like an electric jolt, that grounds itself permanently in my memory. I still remember the first time I felt it.”

— Amy Tan

288. “When there is great suffering, he said, everyone struggles the same. But when there is peace, no one wants to be the same. The rich no longer share. The less rich envy and steal.”

— Amy Tan

289. “Neglect is a surreptitious slayer of the heart. It has as its accomplice carelessness.”

— Amy Tan

290. “In truth, this was a bad thing that Yan Chang had done, telling me my mother’s story. Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth.”

— Amy Tan

291. “Could you wrap your arms around me to keep me warm?”

— Amy Tan

292. “I sat down and remembered a saying Old Aunt used to tell me whenever I complained that I had been wrongly accused: “Don’t strike a flea on a tiger’s head.” Don’t settle one trouble only to make a bigger one.”

— Amy Tan

293. “Through trial with death, you discover your power. Through trial, you shed your mortal flesh, layer after layer, until you become who you are supposed to be.”

— Amy Tan

294. “I remind myself that I know the difference between elusion and delusion. It is the separation between desire and belief. I know what separates the past from the present. What lies between then and now, it is but a moment, an easy thing to lose.”

— Amy Tan

295. “Whenever others disapprove of you, you must disregard them and be the only one to judge your own decisions and actions.”

— Amy Tan

296. “This bird, boasted the market vendor, was once a duck that stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goose, and now look! – it is too beautiful to eat.”

— Amy Tan

297. “A person should consider how things begin. A particular beginning results in a particular end. I.”

— Amy Tan

298. “But sometimes the prodigy in me became impatient. “If you don’t hurry up and get me out of here, I’m disappearing for good,” it warned. “And they you’ll always be nothing.”

— Amy Tan

299. “Now you see why it is useless to cry. Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else’s joy.”

— Amy Tan

300. “I looked at her and saw she was crying. And I also began to cry again, that this was our fate, to live like two turtles seeing the watery world together from the bottom of the little pond.”

— Amy Tan