"If you can't change your fate, change your attitude."
— Amy Tan

"I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever."
— Amy Tan

"Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward."
— Amy Tan (The Kitchen God's Wife)

"Everyone must dream. We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that's like saying you can never change your fate. Isn't that true?"
— Amy Tan (The Hundred Secret Senses)

"Isn't that how it is when you must decide with your heart? You are not just choosing one thing over another. You are choosing what you want. And you are also choosing what somebody else does not want, and all the consequences that follow. You can tell yourself, That's not my problem, but those words do not wash the trouble away. Maybe it is no longer a problem in your life. But it is always a problem in your heart."
— Amy Tan (The Kitchen God's Wife)

"Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever."
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?
-Lena"
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"From what I have observed, when the anesthesia of love wears off, there is always the pain of consequences. You don't have to be stupid to marry the wrong man."
— Amy Tan (Saving Fish from Drowning: A Novel)

"I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind.
-Lindo"
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh.
-An-mei"
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"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"
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"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."
— Amy Tan

"I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever."
— Amy Tan

"We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable.
-Suyuan"
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"Chaos is the penance for leisure."
— Amy Tan (The Bonesetter's Daughter)

"I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water. "
— Amy Tan

"Writing what you wish was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking."
— Amy Tan (The Bonesetter's Daughter)

"how can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?"
— Amy Tan

"After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?"
— Amy Tan (The Bonesetter's Daughter)

"A pious man explained to his followers: 'It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. "Don't be scared," I tell those fishes. "I am saving you from drowning." Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price. With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes."
— Amy Tan (Saving Fish from Drowning: A Novel)

"But I was no longer sacared. I could see what was inside me.
-Lindo"
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"I have loved works of fiction precisely for their illusions, for the author's sleight-of-hand in showing me the magic, what appeared in the right hand but not in the left..."
— Amy Tan (Saving Fish from Drowning: A Novel)

"You can't have intentions without consequences. The question is, who pays for the consequences? Saving fish from drowning. Same thing. Who’s saved? Who’s not?"
— Amy Tan (Saving Fish from Drowning: A Novel)

""Each person is made of five different elements, she told me.
Too much fire and you had a bad temper. That was like my father, whom my mother always critized for his cigarette habit and who always shouted back that she should feel guilty that he didn't let my mother speak her mind.
Too little wood and you bent too quickly to listen to other people's ideas, unable to stand on your own. This was like my Auntie An-mei.
Too much water and you flowed in too many different directions. like myself."
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better.
-Jing-mei"
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"5246
"But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.
-Ying Ying" "
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them."
— Amy Tan (Saving Fish from Drowning: A Novel)

"I won't be what I'm not.
-Jing-mei"
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever.
-An-mei"
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"There's no hope. There's no reason to keep trying.
Because you must. This is not hope. Not reason. This is your fate. This is your life, what you must do."
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"Only two kinds of daughters, she shouted in Chinese. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!"
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"I felt like a rich vagabond who had passed through the world paving my way with gold fairy dust, then realizing too late that the path disintegrated as soon as I passed over it."
— Amy Tan

"You don't care what people think. You don't see your beloved's faults, the slight stinginess, the bit of carelessness, the occasional streak of meanness. You don't mind that he is beneath you socially, educationally, financially, and morally--that's the worst, I think, deficient morals. (Saving Fish From Drowning)"
— Amy Tan (Saving Fish from Drowning: A Novel)

"Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses. "
— Amy Tan

"We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others."
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes. "
— Amy Tan (The Kitchen God's Wife)

"When you lose your face..., it is like dropping your necklace down a well. The only way you can get it back is to fall in after it."
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"In two years' time, my scar became pale and shiny and I had no memory of my mother. 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."
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"Your life is what you see in front of you.
-An-mei"
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"Yesterday my daughter said to me, 'My marriage is falling apart.'
And now all she can do is watch it falling."
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"Too many good things all seem the same after a while. "
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

" 'It means we're looking one way, while following another. We're for one side and also the other. We mean what we say, but our intentions are different.' "
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"Sure I loved him - too much. And he loved me, only not enough. I just want someone who thinks I'm number one in his life. I'm not willing to accept emotional scraps anymore."
— Amy Tan (The Hundred Secret Senses)

"They know where happiness lies, not in a cave or a country, but in love and the freedom to give and take what has been there all along."
— Amy Tan (The Bonesetter's Daughter)

"All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me.
-Ying Ying"
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying.
-An-mei"
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"And when I say that is certainly true, that our marriage is over. I know what else she will say: "Then you must save it."
And even though I know it's hopeless- there's absolutely nothing left to save-I'm afraid if I tell her that, she'll still persuade me to try."
— Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)

"But I don't have anything left inside of me to figure out where I fit in or what I want. If I want anything, it's to know what's possible to want."
— Amy Tan (The Bonesetter's Daughter)

"Kehidupan hanyalah ilusi yang harus kau lepaskan. Ketika makin tua, kau menyadari perubahan posisimu sehubungan dengan kematian. Di masa muda topik kematian adalah filosofis, di usia tiga puluhan topik itu tidak bisa diterima, dan di usia empat puluhan topik itu tidak terhindarkan. Di usia lima puluhan, kau menghadapinya dengan cara-cara yang lebih rasional : mengatur surat wasiat, menghitung aset dan harta warisan, menjelaskan donasi organ tubuhmu, merinci kata-kata yang tepat untuk surat wasiat. Kini di usia enam puluhan, kau kembali jadi filosofis."
— Amy Tan

"I think Kwan intended to show me the world is not a place but the vastness of the sou. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true....If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find them anytime with our hundred secret senses. "
— Amy Tan