Quotes from Amy Tan

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.

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

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.

Her preferred form of exercise, she told Wendy, was stress. "Clench muscles, hold for twelve hours, release for a count of five, then clench again.

I now believe truth lies not in logic but in hope, both past and future. I believe hope can surprise you. It can survive the odds against it, all sorts of contradictions, and certainly any skeptic's rationale on relying on proof through fact.

Nadie, ni yo ni nadie, puede andar este camino por ti. Habrás de recorrerlo tú solo. No está lejos; lo tienes a tu alcance. Tal vez estás en él desde que naciste, sin saberlo. Tal vez está en todas partes: en el mar y en la tierra.

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.

shout, "Enough!

You want to know what the real problem is? You use Elza as a scapegoat for all your insecurities. You've made her a bigger deal in your life than she ever was in mine. You never even knew her, but you project every doubt about yourself onto her... [Said Simon to Olivia]

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

Of cicadas, she would say that they looked like dead leaves fluttering, felt like paper crackling, sounded like fire roaring, smelled like dust rising, and tasted like the devil frying in oil.... You see, in five ways she could sense the world... But it was always the sixth way, her ... sense of importance, that later caused troubles between us. Because her senses led to opinions, and her opinions led to conclusions, and sometimes they were different from mine.

I was like a bird, my wings once carried on a wind of lies. 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

Maybe all Americans who suffer from melancholy act as if they have gone mad. But I truly thought he might throw himself in the river, and I don't want his ghost visiting to keep telling me he's sorry.

Lust leaves you blind long after you've lost your mind in bed.

It was sad and beautiful knowledge that a person cannot be found elsewhere but in his own spirit.

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

I don't have too many lines ingrained upon my face. I look rather pixieish. Sometimes I wish that as I get older my eyes would become lined and take on more character. It just looks like I haven't suffered enough in my life.

He simply translated what was in LuLing's heart: her better intentions, her hopes.

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

Or maybe he would turn to religion. Many Americans did so when faced with heartache and hardship.

I have a sense of my life as a percentage of what has been used and what is likely left. And I get impatient now when I waste time trying to find lost things or doing mundane chores, when I dwell on the unpleasant, when I give my mind to it. So I will kill those moments, banish them, and try to find the moments that can be relived. That's the role of the imagination. It's like reassembling what has happened, yet it's still inaccurate.

He should go away and study, let his mind wander freely. Until then, he should not be obeisant in spirit to those who trampled it.

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.

You can have pride in what you do each day," said Sister Yu, "but not arrogance in what you were born with." She