Quotes from Amy Tan

Neglect is a surreptitious slayer of the heart. It has as its accomplice carelessness.

But my father's faith, as I said, was absolute. Through God's prayer he could be granted exactly what he wanted.

Well, let me tell you, your recollection of every last detail has nothing to do with memory. It's called holding a goddamn grudge. ... That's what I remember the most, not addresses but pain - that old lump-in-the-throat conviction that the world had fingered me for abuse and neglect. Is that the same as a grudge?

old books -- little tombstones of ideas and history

The best metaphors appear unexpectedly out of the deep blue by means of intuition and my infatuation with nuance.

kiss, a pat on the rump, and a deep inhalation of my scent, as if he and I were dogs.

The life we receive is not always what we choose.

To save myself, I destroyed another, and in doing so, I destroyed myself.

Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it - that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.

I read academic books on courtesan culture at the turn-of-the century in Shanghai such as Gail Hershatter's 'The Gender of Memory'. The diaries were mostly in the form of letters from courtesans to a lover who had disappeared or taken their savings.

When I go back and read my journals or fiction, I am always surprised. I may not remember having those thoughts, but they still exist and I know they are mine, and it's all part of making sense of who I am.

Poetry. I read Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Jane Hirschfield. I like to read Billy Collins out loud.

No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.

I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.

Chinese artists have been subversive over thousands of years, taking what they think of the government and embedding it in their art. There might be censorship of not going as far as they might.

I started a second novel seven times and I had to throw them away.

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

My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten.

My parents told me I would become a doctor and then in my spare time I would become a concert pianist. So, both my day job and my spare time were sort of taken care of.

My mother believed in curses, karma, good luck, bad luck, feng shui. Her amorphous set of beliefs showed me you can pick and choose the qualities of your philosophy, based on what works for you.

I'd like to be more forgiving. There are times when I've had a hard time forgiving people who have betrayed me.

Over time, passion wanes, differences don't.

And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. -Rose

I have many reasons why I think reading is really important. It provided for me a refuge, especially during difficult times. It provided me with the notion that I could find an ending that was different from what was happening to me at the time.