Mother Quotes by Amy Tan

A mother is always the beggining. She is how things begin.

— Amy Tan

Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.

— Amy Tan

My mother would say it is literally ghost writers who come to me.

— Amy Tan

I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.

— Amy Tan

Whenever my mother talks to me, she begins the conversation as if we were already in the middle of an argument.

— Amy Tan

For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.

— Amy Tan

I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength..."strongest wind cannot be seen."

— Amy Tan

But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter. -Ying Ying

— Amy Tan

I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn't understand her English, because she was Chinese.

— Amy Tan

“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

Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that…

— Amy Tan

My mother said I was a clingy kid until I was about four. I also remember that from the age of eight…

— Amy Tan

“My mother knows how to hit a nerve. And the pain I feel is worse than any other kind of misery. Because…

— Amy Tan

I saw my mother in a different light. We all need to do that. You have to be displaced from what's comfortable…

— Amy Tan

People think it's a terrible tragedy when somebody has Alzheimer's. But in my mother's case, it's different. My mother has been unhappy…

— Amy Tan

“What use for? asks my mother, jiggling the table with her hand. You put something else on top, everything fall down.”

— Amy Tan

Even if I had expected it, even if I had known what I was going to do with my life, it would…

— Amy Tan

I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect for…

— Amy Tan

At the beginning of my career as a writer, I felt I knew nothing of Chinese culture. I was writing about emotional…

— Amy Tan

I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, to eat my own bitterness.…

— Amy Tan

Mothers have the huge influence, and I feel like they're always teaching us from the day we're born what to be afraid…

— Amy Tan

“And then I see my mother sitting by the open window, her dark silhouette against the night sky. She turns around in…

— Amy Tan

She [my mother] said that if I listened to her, later I would know what she knew: where true words came from,…

— Amy Tan

My mother imparted her daily truths so she could help my older brothers and me rise above our circumstances. We lived in…

— Amy Tan

“...A mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place. She teaches you the nature of happiness: what is…

— Amy Tan

Each person is made of five different elements, she told me. Too much fire and you had a bad temper. That was…

— Amy Tan

Clichés are static, the emotion behind them long spent. If you are tempted to use them, here is a saying of my…

— Amy Tan

And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful…

— Amy Tan

I had always assumed we had an unspoken understanding about these things: that she didn't really mean I was a failure, and…

— Amy Tan

My sisters and I stand, arms around each other, laughind and wiping the tears from each others eyes. The flash of the…

— Amy Tan

How I saw in her my own true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside my bones... Even though I was young,…

— Amy Tan

Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to…

— Amy Tan

“...I owed her a debt of gratitude. More than gratitude, much more. I could finally see what had always been there. She…

— Amy Tan

“Can I tell my daughter that I loved her father? This was the man who rubbed my feet at night. He praised…

— Amy Tan

A Mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place.

— Amy Tan

“A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.”

— Amy Tan

My mother didn't teach me lessons about being Chinese as strongly as she did the notion of who I was as a…

— Amy Tan

My mother had a very difficult childhood, having seen her own mother kill herself. So she didnt always know how to be…

— Amy Tan

“My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other's meanings and I seemed to hear less than what…

— Amy Tan

My mother had a look on her face that I'll never forget. It was one of complete despair and horror, for losing…

— Amy Tan