The Bonesetter's Daughter Quotes

“Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“What is the past but what we choose to remember?”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“You can have pride in what you do each day, but not arrogance in what you were born with.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“Chaos is the penance for leisure.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“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

“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

“He asked if he could recite a poem he had written that morning: 'You speak,' he said, 'the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset. I want to follow its trail to eternity.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“So much of history is mystery. We don't know what is lost forever, what will surface again. All objects exist in a moment of time. And that fragment of time is preserved or lost or found in mysterious ways. Mystery is a wonderful part of life.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“Dementia was like a truth serum.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“Dementia. Ruth puzzled over the diagnosis: How could such a beautiful-sounding word apply to such a destructive disease? It was a name befitting a goddess: Dementia, who caused her sister Demeter to forget to turn winter into spring.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“All objects exist in a moment of time.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“Forever did not mean what it once had. Forever was what changed inevitably over time.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“That is the problem with modern ink from a bottle. You do not have to think. You simply write what is swimming on the top of your brain. And the top is nothing but pond scum, dead leaves, and mosquito spawn. But when you push an inkstick along an inkstone, you take the first step to cleansing your mind and your heart. You push and you ask yourself, What are my intentions? What is in my heart that matches my mind? I”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“You are beauty, we are beauty, we are divine, unchanged by time.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“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.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“What do you think was the very first sound to become a word, a meaning?' ... And then I realized what the first word must have been: ma, the sound of a baby smacking its lips in search of her mother's breast. Ma, ma, ma. Then the mother decided that was her name and she began to speak, too. She taught the baby to be careful: sky, fire, tiger. A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“The farther you move from the core of the problem, the faster the situation spins out of control.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“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”
― amy tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“Precious Auntie, what is our name? I always meant to claim it as my own. Come help me remember. I'm not a little girl anymore. I'm not afraid of ghosts. Are you still mad at me? Don't you recognize me? I am LuLing, your daughter.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“The Doppler Effect of Communication”: There is always distortion between what a speaker says and what a listener wants it to mean. “The Centrifugal Force of Arguments”: The farther you move from the core of the problem, the faster the situation spins out of control.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“It is for her grandmother, for herself, for the little girl who became her mother.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“Was it a craving for salt, or for pain?”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“Years before, she had dreamed of writing stories as a way to escape. She could revise her life and become someone else. She could be somewhere else. In her imagination she could change everything, herself, her mother, her past. But the idea of revising her life also frightened her, as if by imagination alone she were condemning what she did not like about herself or others. Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“We both knew we were speaking about the effortlessness with which one falls in love without intending to, as if we were two stalks of bamboo bend toward each other by the chance of the wind. And then we bent toward each other and kissed, lost in the nowhere of being together.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“I imagined two people without words, unable to speak to each other. I imagined the need: The color of the sky that meant 'storm'. The smell of fire that meant 'flee'. The sound of a tiger about to pounce. Who would worry about such things? And then I realized what the first word must have been: ma, the sound of a baby smacking its lips in search of her mother's breast. For a long time, that was the only word the baby needed. Ma, ma, ma. Then the mother decided that was her name and she began to speak, too. She taught the baby to be careful: sky,fire,tiger. A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“She loved cooperative vegetables.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter