Top 400 Amy Tan Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “As a precaution, Ruth had also gnawed over the worst possibilities – brain tumor, Alzheimer’s, stroke – believing this would ensure that it was not these things. History had always proven that she worried for nothing.”

— Amy Tan

352. “Death was not necessarily a portal to the blank bliss of absolute nothingness. It was a deep dive into the unknown.”

— Amy Tan

353. “I would beat those wings to stay aloft, and when the wind suddenly died or buffeted me around, I would keep beating those strong wings and fly in my own slice of wind.”

— Amy Tan

354. “By then I didn’t have enough feeling left in my body to cry.”

— Amy Tan

355. “Too much happiness, said the man who returned, always overflows into tears of sorrow.”

— Amy Tan

356. “Once the story captures my senses, I am no longer conscious of the act of reading words. I am in the story.”

— Amy Tan

357. “In a crowd of Caucasians, two Chinese people are already like family.”

— Amy Tan

358. “And so fate – if you can call it that – changed course over the rainforest canopy, and kindnesses and miracles poured like quenching rain after a drought. Such is the nature of happy endings.”

— Amy Tan

359. “Actually, I’m hoping we might have that. A commitment through time, past, present, future... marriage.”

— Amy Tan

360. “You can’t have luck when someone else has skills.”

— Amy Tan

361. “Most of the girls were like me, the love children of suicides, singsong girls, and unmarried maidens.”

— Amy Tan

362. “And once you reached the top, you would be able to see everything and feel such happiness it would be enough to never have worries in your life ever again.”

— Amy Tan

363. “I want us to love each other so deeply we ache with the fullness of it.”

— Amy Tan

364. “Japanese chase-away juice.” And.”

— Amy Tan

365. “Pero no puedes permanecer en la oscuridad durante mucho tiempo. Algo dentro de ti empieza a desvanecerse y entonces te vuelves como una persona hambrienta, desesperadamente ansiosa de luz.”

— Amy Tan

366. “Ruth believed Wendy made her life more sparkly, but today was not a good time for sparkles.”

— Amy Tan

367. “I realized I am self-centered, that I’m used to thinking about me first. But I also realized that you tend to think about you second. It’s as though I had permission from you to be less responsible. I’m not saying it’s your fault. But you have to learn to take back, grab it when it’s offered. Don’t fight it. Don’t get all tense thinking it’s complicated. Just take it, and if you want to be polite, say thank you.”

— Amy Tan

368. “But why didn’t I flood in the same way? Why was their happiness tenfold what I felt? Did I lack the proper connection between the senses and the heart? And then I realized that this was my habit. To hold back my feelings.”

— Amy Tan

369. “I had discarded pride, that useless burden of self-importance I had carried around like my portable vanity with its broken mirror.”

— Amy Tan

370. “With imagined tragedy hovering over us, we became inseparable, two halves creating the whole: yin and yang.”

— Amy Tan

371. “Her mastery of the language was a blissful expression of the spirit to her, like playing a musical instrument.”

— Amy Tan

372. “My thinking is this: Her original mother, she did what she must. I, her in-between mother, I did what I must. That Japanese couple, they also did what they must. One day, this little girl will grow up, and she will be doing what she must. So you see, we all do what we must.”

— Amy Tan

373. “Confucius say a woman is worth a thousand words. Tell your wife she’s used up her total.”

— Amy Tan

374. “Fear, I think, is the worst element of religions of all kinds. It is used to justify more fear, as well as hatred, lack of compassion, intolerance, and war.”

— Amy Tan

375. “She didn’t even pause to think. She simply said in a way that made it clear there was no more to the story: “Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies.”

— Amy Tan

376. “What happened to Violet was terrible, and I’m not saying fate happens without blame. But when fate turns out well, everyone should forget the bad road that got us here.”

— Amy Tan

377. “The hunger in our hearts was instantly filled.”

— Amy Tan

378. “Sometimes I feel like I’m a pair of eyes and ears, and I’m just trying to stay safe and make sense of what’s happening. I don’t want pain. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to see other people around me die. But I don’t have anything left inside me to figure out where I fit in or what I want. If I want anything, it’s to know what’s possible to want.”

— Amy Tan

379. “Maybe too many opinions is an American custom. I think Chinese people don’t like to have different opinions at the same time. We believe in one thing, we stick to it for one hundred years, five hundred years. Less confusion that way.”

— Amy Tan

380. “Life was good until the putges came. After that, there was nothing to do except flee into the jungle, high up, where it was so thick only wold things grew. When the putgest stopped Black Spot and his grids and cousin went quietly to the town of Nyang Shwe, where they were not known. They procured black-market identity cards of dead people with good reputations. After that they lived two ways: in the open life of the dead, and in the hidden life of the living.”

— Amy Tan

381. “Mile after mile, all of it familiar, yet not, this distance that separates us, me from my mother.”

— Amy Tan

382. “Kwan saw what she believed. I saw what I didn’t want to believe.”

— Amy Tan

383. “I know what to avoid, what to worry about. I’m like those kids who live with gunfire going off around them. I don’t want pain. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to see other people around me die. But I don’t have anything left inside me to figure out where I fit in or what I want. If I want anything, it’s to know what’s possible to want.”

— Amy Tan

384. “This was not chance that they met twice, my mother would tell me whenever she recounted this story. It was fate.”

— Amy Tan

385. “Only Americans think they have rights,” Magic Gourd said. “What laws of heaven give you more rights and allow you to keep them? They are words on paper written by men who make them up and claim them. One day they can blow away, just like that.” She.”

— Amy Tan

386. “And later, I discovered that maybe it was fate alla long, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you’re in control. i found out the most I could have was hope, and with that I was not denying any possibility, good or bad.”

— Amy Tan

387. “And before they ate the last supper of life-ending mushrooms, they would pound the drums and sound the hours. They would ready the souls of their bodies, the soul of the eyes, the soul of the mouths, all of them, one by one. They would know to be ready, to not dillydally and get left behind. Soon the soldiers would arrive. They would stab them with their bayonets, shoot them with their rifles, but they would already be gone, their bodies empty like the hollow husks of the emeralds beetles.”

— Amy Tan

388. “After a while I didn’t think it was a terrible life, no, not really. After a while, I hurt so much I didn’t feel any difference.”

— Amy Tan

389. “I think about our two faces. I think about my intentions. Which one is American? Which one is Chinese? Which one is better? If you show one, you must always sacrifice the other.”

— Amy Tan

390. “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

391. “We translated each other’s meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more.”

— Amy Tan

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

— Amy Tan

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

— Amy Tan

394. “The mind fools the eye. The eye makes us fools.”

— Amy Tan

395. “Look at that. There one family lives, kitchen is in China, bedroom is in Myanmar. In this way, this family eats in one country, sleeps in other. I think this house been standing there for many centuries, yes, long time, before anyone decided where one country stops, the other starts.”

— Amy Tan

396. “How funny to see the foreigner in a farmer’s work hat, like a fish that has put on clothes. Around.”

— Amy Tan

397. “Years before, she had dreamed of writing stories as a way to escape. She could revise her life and become someone else. She could be somewhere else. In her imagination she could change everything, herself, her mother, her past. But the idea of revising her life also frightened her, as if by imagination alone she were condemning what she did not like about herself or others. Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.”

— Amy Tan

398. “Teddy once told me that it’s natural that we feel alone, and that’s because our hearts are different from others and we don’t even know how. When we’re in love, as if by magic, our different hearts come together perfectly toward the same desire. Eventually, the differences return, and then comes heartache and mending, and, in between, much loneliness and fear. If love remains despite the pain of those differences, it must be guarded as rare...”

— Amy Tan

399. “Fate once made you American. Fate took it away.”

— Amy Tan

400. “She was either temperamental, meaning short-tempered and unhappy, or she was melancholy, meaning listless and unhappy.”

— Amy Tan