Amy Tan

“Being able to restrain my emotions isn’t a great victory—it’s the pitiful proof of lost love.”

— 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

“What are ghosts if not the hope that love continues beyond our ordinary senses? If ghosts are a delusion, then let me…

— Amy Tan

“If you don’t take a chance, someone else will give you his luck. And if you get bad luck, then you need…

— Amy Tan

“When Jesus was born, he was already the son of God. I was the daughter of someone who ran away, a big…

— Amy Tan

Language is the tool of my trade -and I use them all - all the Englishes I grew up with

— Amy Tan

“I asked myself, What is true about a person? Would I change in the same way the river changes color but still…

— Amy Tan

“This is beauty...and you are beauty, and love is beauty and we are beauty. We are divine, unchanged by time.”

— 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

Yet part of me also thinks the whole idea makes perfect sense. The three of us, leaving our differences behind, stepping on…

— Amy Tan

I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called…

— Amy Tan

“I do not consider myself a religious person, because I don't adhere to a particular religion or faith or prescribed beliefs, as…

— Amy Tan

“Writing is the witness to myself about myself. Whatever others say of me or how they interpret me is a simulacrum of…

— Amy Tan

Isn't that how it is when you must decide with your heart? You are not just choosing one thing over another. You…

— 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

“These are the things I know are true ...”

— Amy Tan

External success has to do with people who may see me as a model, or an example, or a representative. As much…

— 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

I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not…

— Amy Tan

“And my eyes, my mother gave me my eyes, no eyelids, as if they were carved on a jack-o'-lantern with two swift…

— Amy Tan

“Even when I worked in that world, I still wanted love so strong that the man would have no interest in another…

— Amy Tan

I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will…

— Amy Tan

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

— Amy Tan

“It’s my fault she is this way. I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How…

— Amy Tan

Now they seemed to be in a contest over who could irritate her more, and she sometimes had to remind herself that…

— Amy Tan