Amy Tan
Amy Tan
Amy Tanis an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships and the Chinese-American experience. Her best-known work is The Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 25 languages. In 1993, the book was adapted into a commercially successful film...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 February 1952
CityOakland, CA
CountryUnited States of America
penance leisure chaos
Chaos is the penance for leisure.
despair wish unbearable
We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. -Suyuan
woods rotten world
We are living in a world where everything is false. The society is like bright paint applied on top of rotten wood.
loses
I did not lose myself all at once.
daughter eye knowing
When my daughter looks at me, she sees a small old lady. That is because she sees only with her outside eyes. She has no chuming, no inside knowing of things. If she had chuming she would see a tiger lady. And she would have careful fear.
understanding firsts remember
I can never remember things I didn't understand in the first place.
daughter two chinese
Only two kinds of daughters, she shouted in Chinese. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!
daughter running children
I saw what I had been fighting for: It was for me, a scared child, who had run away a long time ago to what I had imagined was a safer place. And hiding in this place, behind my invisible barriers, I knew what lay on the other side: Her side attacks. Her secret weapons. Her uncanny ability to find my weakest spots. But in the brief instant that I had peered over the barriers I could finally see what was finally there: an old woman, a wok for her armor, a knitting needle for her sword, getting a little crabby as she waited patiently for her daughter to invite her in.
daughter fall yesterday
Yesterday my daughter said to me, 'My marriage is falling apart.' And now all she can do is watch it falling.
encouragement thinking fiction
No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.
opposites world chaos
how can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?
daughter running selfish
For all these years I kept my mouth closed so selfish desires would not fall out. And because I remained quiet for so long now my daughter does not hear me... All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. And because I moved so secretly now my daughter does not see me... We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing; unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.
betrayal years piano
And for all those years, we never talked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible accusations afterward at the piano bench. All that remained unchecked, like a betrayal that was now unbreakable. So I never found a way to ask her why she had hoped something so large that failure was inevitable. And even worse, I never asked her what frightened me the most: Why had she given up hope?
moments existence objects
All objects exist in a moment of time.