Top Amy Tan Quotes About Writing, Two Kinds, Joy Luck Club

What are some Amy Tan quotes About Writing, Two Kinds, Joy Luck Club you’d suggest readers take away from her books?

Amy Tan (born April 24, 1944) is an American novelist who has published several novels, including The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, and Saving Fish From Drowning. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1993 for her novel The Valley of Amazement.

Amy Tan is an author from California who was born on April 24, 1944. Her first book, entitled “The House Of Exile”, was published in 1971 and she has since become one of America’s leading contemporary authors. In 1994, she won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her third novel, “The Bonesetter’s Daughter”.

She wrote another book titled “Saving Fish From Drowning” in 2005. Amy Tan’s parents immigrated to the United States at the age of nine. They worked their way through high school and college before settling in Los Angeles. Amy credits her mother and father with teaching her to read at a young age.

This article provides a collection of inspiring quotes by Amy Tan. These inspirational quotes for writing will motivate you to achieve your goals. Some of the popular include on this website

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Table of Contents

Top Amy Tan Quotes

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 don’t feel the need to be a role model, it’s just something that’s been thrust upon me.

Hope is the adrenalin of the soul.

I find it happening less here partly because people are more aware now of the flaws of political correctness -that literature has to do something to educate people.

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.

I would still like to have that luxury, to be able to just sit and draw for hours and hours and hours. In a way, that’s what I do as a writer.

All of us go through angst and identity crises. And even when you write in a specific context, you still tap into that subtext of emotions that we all feel about love and hope, and mothers and obligations and responsibilities.

I wanted to write stories for myself. At first it was purely an aesthetic thing about craft. I just wanted to become good at the art of something. And writing was very private.

Amy Tan Quotes About Writing

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.

I AM A PERSON WHO THINKS ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE SPIRIT WHEN I WRITE. I THINK ABOUT WHAT CAN’T BE KNOWN AND ONLY IMAGINED. I OFTEN SENSE A SPIRIT OR FORCE OR MEANING BEYOND MYSELF. I LEAVE IT OPEN AS TO WHAT THE SPIRIT IS, BUT I CONTINUE TO MAKE GUESSES.

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.

I feel I’ve always been writing about self-identity. How do we become who we are So I’m just writing from experience what’s concerned me.

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

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.

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.

In [writing] fiction, every sentence is its own reward.

It’s a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.

Sometimes you change to survive, and some things you don’t give up, or you’re too prideful, and then you think well, what’s pride Is it a good thing Maybe it’s a bad thing. That’s what I look at in my life. It’s always a question in my life I look at, and I never find the answer, because if I did, probably I wouldn’t have books to write.

The muse appears at the point in my writing when I sense a subtle shift, a nudge to move over, and everything cracks open, the writing is freed, the lanuage is full, resources are plentiful, ideas pour forth, and to be frank, some of these ideas surprise me. It seems as thought the universe is my friend and is helping me write, its hand over mine.

We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense, and yet it is also absolutely necessary. In writing a story, it is the place where I begin.

Writing is an extreme privilege but it’s also a gift. It’s a gift to yourself and it’s a gift of giving a story to someone.

Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.

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.’

You can never be an artist if your work comes without effort. That is the problem with modernink 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.

You write a book and you hope somebody will go out and pay $24.95 for what you’ve just said. I think books were my salvation. Books saved me from being miserable.

Amy Tan Quotes About Mothers

A girl is like a young tree, she said. You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight. But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first strong wind. And then you will be like a weed, growing wild in any direction, running along the ground until someone pulls you out and throws you away.

A mother is always the beggining. She is how things begin.

And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds

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

But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.

Clichés are static, the emotion behind them long spent. If you are tempted to use them, here is a saying of my mother’s Fang pi bu-cho, cho pi bu-fang. Basically that translates to

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.

Even if I had expected it, even if I had known what I was going to do with my life, it would have knocked the wind out of me. When something that violent hits you, you can’t help but lose your balance and fall. And after you pick yourself up, you realize you can’t trust anybody to save you- not your husband, not your mother, not God. So what can you do to stop yourself from tilting and falling all over again

For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.

I had always assumed we had an unspoken understanding about these things that she didn’t really mean I was a failure, and I really meant I would try to respect her opinions more. But listening to Auntie Lin tonight reminds me once agian My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other’s meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more. No doubt she told Auntie Lin I was going back to school to get a doctorate.

I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.

I take a few quick sips.

I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn’t understand her English, because she was Chinese.

Mothers have the huge influence, and I feel like they’re always teaching us from the day we’re born what to be afraid of, what to be cautious of, what we should like and what we should look like. Then we spend half of our life trying to be not like them, and then we reach another part of our lives where we see these things we can’t get rid of.

My mother had a very difficult childhood, having seen her own mother kill herself. So she didnt always know how to be the nurturing mother that we all expect we should have.

My mother said I was a clingy kid until I was about four. I also remember that from the age of eight she and I fought almost every day.

On the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mother’s case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow.

People think it’s a terrible tragedy when somebody has Alzheimer’s. But in my mother’s case, it’s different. My mother has been unhappy all her life. For the first time in her life, she’s happy.

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

Amy Tan Quotes From The Joy Luck Club

After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember

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.

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.

But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better.

Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.

Each person is made of five different elements, she told me.

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

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.

How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently

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.

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.

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.

I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.

I love and am loved, fully and freely, nothing expected, more than enough received.

I won’t be what I’m not.

If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude.

Isn’t hate merely the result of wounded love

Now you see,’ said the turtle, drifting back into the pond, ‘why it is useless to cry. Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else’s joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.

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.

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.

That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.

Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.

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 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 much water and you flowed in too many different directions. like myself.

We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable.

We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming – well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.

Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.

You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying.

You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.

Two Kinds By Amy Tan Quotes

At first my mother thought I could be a Chinese Shirley Temple.

My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America.

Only two kinds of daughters, she shouted in Chinese. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!

Peter Pan is very popular these days,’ the instructor assured my mother.

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Best Amy Tan Quotes & Sayings

Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.

Hope is the adrenalin of the soul.

How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently

How do I create something out of nothing And how do I create my own life I think it is by questioning, and saying to myself that there are no absolute truths.

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.

I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.

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 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.

I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength…strongest wind cannot be seen.

If you are greedy, what is inside you is what makes you always hungry.

If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude.

Libraries are the pride of the city.

Over time, passion wanes, differences don’t.

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

That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.

The life we receive is not always what we choose.

We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming – well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.

With each passing day, I didn’t lose hope. I fought to have more.

Words to me were magic. You could say a word and it could conjure up all kinds of images or feelings or a chilly sensation or whatever. It was amazing to me that words had this power.

Writing is an extreme privilege but it’s also a gift. It’s a gift to yourself and it’s a gift of giving a story to someone.

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.

You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.

You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.

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