Quotes from Amy Tan

Suffer more now, suffer less later.

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

But you can't stay in the dark for so long. Something inside of you starts to fade and you become like a starving person, crazy-hungry for light.

I was the daughter of my father's wife. I spoke in a trembly voice. I became pale, ill, and more thin. I let myself become a wounded animal. I let the hunter come to me and turn me into a tiger ghost. I willingly gave up my chi , the spirit that caused me so much pain. Now I was a tiger that neither pounced nor lay waiting between the trees. I became an unseen spirit.

Free time was the most precious time, when you should be doing what you loved, or at least slowing down enough to remember what made your life worthwhile and happy.

You are beauty, we are beauty, we are divine, unchanged by time.

I felt stuck in the bottom of a wishing well. I was desperate to shout what I wanted, but I didn't know what that was. I knew only what it wasn't. The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan

A few times I invited Ba to visit me from the World of Yin. But other yin friends tell me he is stuck somewhere else, a foggy place where people believe their lies are true.

These are the things I know are true ...

I thought about things, the pros and cons. But in the end I would be so confused, because I never believed there was ever any one right answer, yet there were many wrong ones.

I imagine a hundred Chinese Icaruses, molding wings out of earwax. You can't stop people from wishing.

To keep false hopes is to prolong misery.

The life we receive is not always what we choose.

Life's always a big fucking compromise. You don't always get what you want, no matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how good you are. That's a myth. We're all hanging in the best way we can.

I am ashamed she is ashamed. Because she is my daughter and I am proud of her, and I am her mother but she is not proud of me.

My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes.

The only thing certain in times of great uncertainty is that people will behave with great strength or weakness, and with very little else in between.

Even though I did not understand her entire story, I understood her grief.

A little knowledge withheld is a great advantage one should store for future use.

All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.

At first, I thought it was because I was raised with all this Chinese humility... Or maybe it was because when you're Chinese you're supposed to accept everything, flow with the Tao and not make waves. But my therapist said, Why do you blamd your culture, your ethnicity? And I remembered reading an article about baby boomers, how we expect the best and when we get it we worry that maybe we shoudl have expected more, because it's all diminishing returns after a certain age.

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

I tried to keep very still, but my heart felt like crickets scratching to get out of the cage.

Can you imagine how it is, to want to be neither inside nor outside, to want to be nowhere and disappear?