Amy Tan Quotes

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Amy Tan

Profession : Novelist

Birth : February 19, 1952

I have a writer's memory which makes everything worse than maybe it actually was.

Amy Tan

I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and, in that respect, I liked Bible stories, because to me they were very gothic.

Amy Tan

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.

Amy Tan

I think I've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success.

Amy Tan

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

Amy Tan

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

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.

Amy Tan

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.

Amy Tan

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.

Amy Tan

My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten.

Amy Tan

My parents told me I would become a doctor and then in my spare time I would become a concert pianist. So, both my day job and my spare time were sort of taken care of.

Amy Tan

Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden.

Amy Tan

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.'

Amy Tan

That was a wonderful period in my life. I mean, I didn't become an artist, but somebody let me do something I loved. What a luxury, to do something you love to do.

Amy Tan

The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.

Amy Tan

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.'

Amy Tan

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

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.

Amy Tan

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.

Amy Tan