Amy Tan
When my mother read 'The Joy Luck Club', she was always complaining to me how she had to tell her friends that, no, she was not the mother or any of the mothers in the book.
I like to go somewhere where I learn something I didn't know before, like the Dry Tortugas between Florida and Cuba.
At the beginning of my career as a writer, I felt I knew nothing of Chinese culture. I was writing about emotional confusion with my mother related to our different beliefs. Hers was based in family history, which I didn't know anything about. I always felt hesitant in talking about Chinese culture and American culture.
I felt ashamed of being different and ashamed of feeling that way.
She said 'I'm by commission. You don't have to pay anything until you sell anything.' I said, 'Well fine. You want to be my agent and not make anything.' I thought, 'Boy, is she dumb.'
There are a lot of people who think that's what's needed to be successful is always being right, always being careful, always picking the right path.
Luck is in every part of China. Many Chinese stores and restaurants have the word 'luck' in their names. The idea is that, just by using the word 'luck' in names of things, you can attract more of it. I think that's true in my life as well. You attract luck because you go after it.
In the mid-1800s, they were known also as 'singsong houses,' and the courtesans were actually master musicians.
When you read about the lives of other people, people of different circumstances or similar circumstances, you are part of their lives for that moment. You inhabit their lives, and you feel what they're feeling, and that is compassion. If we see that reading does allow us that, we see how absolutely essential reading is.
My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten.
You can get sucked into the idea that, 'Gosh, this is impressive. Maybe I should do this. It will look good.' Or 'I'll write like this because it will impress that critic.'
People talk about this 'bucket list': 'I need to go to this country, I need to skydive.' Whereas I need to think as much as I can, to feel as much as I can, to be conscious and observe and understand me and the people around me as much as I can.
I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary; we did not have any books in the house.
I write because I know that one day I will die, and thus I should experience as many deliberate observations, careful thoughts, wild ideas, and deep emotions as I can before that day occurs.
God, life changes faster than you think.
I'd like to be more forgiving. There are times when I've had a hard time forgiving people who have betrayed me.
My favorite anything is always relative to the context of present time, place and mood. When I finish a book and want to immediately find another by the same author and no other, that author is elevated to my favorite.
I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice.
I just feel very lucky to be able to write fiction because I think, otherwise, I would have had to spend a fortune on a psychiatrist - and I still wouldn't get 1/100th of what I get writing fiction.
It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.
I was shocked, and I ended up contacting three academics to find out if it could possibly be that my grandmother was a courtesan.
I went to an exhibition at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum about Shanghai, about how courtesans had been influential in bringing western culture to Shanghai. I bought a book and in it saw this striking group of women in a photograph called 'The Ten Beauties of Shanghai'.
I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.
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.
I have survivor skills. Some of that is superficial - what I present to people outwardly - but what makes people resilient is the ability to find humour and irony in situations that would otherwise overpower you.
My mother had a very difficult childhood, having seen her own mother kill herself. So she didn't always know how to be the nurturing mother that we all expect we should have.
In a second-class courtesan house, the courtship was much briefer. It could even be one night; usually it went on a little bit longer. But as the years went by, that period of courtship was shorter and shorter.
The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.
My mother left behind three daughters when she went to America and started a new life. I certainly felt abandoned when my father died of a brain tumour; I felt he had abandoned me to this terrible, volatile mother and I had no protection.
I started a second novel seven times and I had to throw them away.
I have a writer's memory which makes everything worse than maybe it actually was.
My grandmother. She's someone I never met, and I would've loved to have met her. She's been a huge influence on our entire family, not just me. She is a mystery. It's not clear exactly what about her is truth and myth.
Hope is the adrenalin of the soul.Collection: Hope
You have to be your own person. You can't let people's opinions determine how you think about yourself. There's a difference between identity and self-identity.Collection: Thinking
I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength..."strongest wind cannot be seen."Collection: Strength
How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently?Collection: Weakness
So sad! This is the saddest part when you lose someone you love- that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost?Collection: Someone You Love
What is a secret wish?" "It is what you want but cannot ask.Collection: Secret
You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.Collection: Heart
Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.Collection: Luck
That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.Collection: Hurt
Memory feeds imagination.Collection: Memories
I am fascinated by language in daily life: the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.Collection: Writing
I think we often write because we feel a loneliness, and people read for the same reason, and then they come away feeling a little less lonely.Collection: Lonely
Libraries are the pride of the city.Collection: Pride
You see what power is holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them.Collection: Power
I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.Collection: Feelings
No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.Collection: Reality
So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. the pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and giver her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.Collection: Mother