Show more

Amy Tan Quotes: 10

  • 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.

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

    The Hundred Secret Senses
  • If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.

  • 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?

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

    The Joy Luck Club
  • Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?

    The Joy Luck Club
  • You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.

    Saving Fish from Drowning
  • too much happiness always overflowed into tears of sorrow.

    The Hundred Secret Senses
  • I think now that fate is half shaped by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. You have to pay attention to what you lost. You have to undo the expectation.

    The Joy Luck Club
  • 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?

    The Joy Luck Club