Create Yours

Top 400 Amy Tan Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 6 of 9

Amy Tan Quote: “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 Quote: “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 Quote: “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 Quote: “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 Quote: “How can I argue with someone who makes no sense?”
Amy Tan Quote: “Was it a craving for salt, or for pain?”
Amy Tan Quote: “I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.”
Amy Tan Quote: “Do you know what morals are Violet? They’re other people’s rules. Do you know what a conscience is? Freedom to use your own intelligence to determine what is right or wrong. You possess that freedom and no one can remove it from you.”
Amy Tan Quote: “Among writers, if you don’t have a therapist, it’s like saying you don’t keep a journal or use the thesaurus. It’s a natural accompaniment.”
Amy Tan Quote: “I learned to make things not matter, to put a seal on my hopes and place them on a high shelf, out of reach. And by telling myself that there was nothing inside those hopes anyway, I avoided the wounds of deep disappointment. The pain was no worse than the quick sting of a booster shot. And yet thinking about this makes me ache again. How is it that as a child I knew I should have been loved more? Is everyone born with a bottomless emotional resevoir?”
Amy Tan Quote: “Later they will remember those moments with you. But they are not memories of you, but the feeling they were immortal because you made them gods.”
Amy Tan Quote: “When you already believe something, how can you suddenly stop? When you are a loyal friend, how can you no longer be one?”
Amy Tan Quote: “I hope you don’t suffer forever from keeping love from your heart.”
Amy Tan Quote: “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 Quote: “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 Quote: “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 Quote: “I made a promise to myself: I would always remember my parents’ wishes, but I would never forget myself.”
Amy Tan Quote: “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 Quote: “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 Quote: “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 Quote: “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 Quote: “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 Quote: “Auntie had a tongue like hungry scissors eating silk cloth.”
Amy Tan Quote: “I was returning with myself whole and unbroken – limbs, mind, and spirit. I had discarded pride, that useless burden of self-importance.”
Amy Tan Quote: “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 Quote: “A moment is not the same as time.”
Amy Tan Quote: “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 Quote: “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 Quote: “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 Quote: “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 Quote: “Jane Eyre taught me that loneliness had more to do with being misunderstood than being alone.”
Amy Tan Quote: “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 Quote: “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 Quote: “She loved cooperative vegetables.”
Amy Tan Quote: “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 Quote: “I am crying now, sobbing and laughing at the same time, seeing but not understanding this loyalty to my mother.”
Amy Tan Quote: “I imagine a hundred Chinese Icaruses, molding wings out of earwax. You can’t stop people from wishing.”
Amy Tan Quote: “Neglect is a surreptitious slayer of the heart. It has as its accomplice carelessness.”
Amy Tan Quote: “Could you wrap your arms around me to keep me warm?”
Amy Tan Quote: “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 Quote: “Whenever others disapprove of you, you must disregard them and be the only one to judge your own decisions and actions.”
Amy Tan Quote: “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 Quote: “Believe me, daughter, there is nothing worse than having your own family member out for revenge.”
Amy Tan Quote: “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 Quote: “With imagined tragedy hovering over us, we became inseparable, two halves creating the whole: yin and yang.”
Amy Tan Quote: “I feed myself with the old grief.”
Amy Tan Quote: “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 Quote: “My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other’s meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more.”
Amy Tan Quote: “A person should consider how things begin. A particular beginning results in a particular end. I.”
Amy Tan Quote: “See the gold metal I can now wear. I gave birth to your brothers and then your father gave me these two bracelets. Then I had you. And every few years, when I have a little extra money, I buy another bracelet. I know what I’m worth. They’re always twenty-four carats, all genuine.”
PREV 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 NEXT
Attitude Quotes
Strong Quotes
Firsts Quotes
Reading Quotes
Quotes About Stories
Country Quotes
Betrayal Quotes
Fate Quotes
Motivational Quotes
Inspirational Entrepreneurship Quotes
Positive Quotes
Albert Einstein Quotes

Beautiful Wallpapers and Images

We hope you enjoyed our collection of 400 Amy Tan Quotes.

All the images on this page were created with QuoteFancy Studio.

Use QuoteFancy Studio to create high-quality images for your desktop backgrounds, blog posts, presentations, social media, videos, posters, and more.

Learn more