I didn't fear failure. I expected failure. Amy Tan More Quotes by Amy Tan More Quotes From 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 survivor skills people 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. Amy Tan mother father ideas We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others. Amy Tan joy-luck-club unseen hearing I think Kwan intended to show me the world is not a place but the vastness of the sou. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true....If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find them anytime with our hundred secret senses. Amy Tan knowing moving thinking Chaos is the penance for leisure. Amy Tan penance leisure chaos 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 eight mother kids We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. -Suyuan Amy Tan unbearable despair wish 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. Amy Tan girl mother running I saw my mother in a different light. We all need to do that. You have to be displaced from what's comfortable and routine, and then you get to see things with fresh eyes, with new eyes. Amy Tan light eye mother The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye. Amy Tan catchers influence reading I love and am loved, fully and freely, nothing expected, more than enough received. Amy Tan expected enough inspiring I learned to make things not matter, to put a seal on my hopes and place them on a high shelf, out of reach. And by telling myself that there was nothing inside those hopes anyway, I avoided the wounds of deep disappointment. The pain was no worse than the quick sting of a booster shot. And yet thinking about this makes me ache again. How is it that as a child I knew I should have been loved more? Is everyone born with a bottomless emotional resevoir? Amy Tan pain disappointment children I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control. Amy Tan joy-luck-club illusion fate God, life changes faster than you think. Amy Tan inspire life thinking And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind. Amy Tan left-behind behinds form 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? Amy Tan betrayal piano years Too many good things all seem the same after a while. Amy Tan good-things seems I started a second novel seven times and I had to throw them away. Amy Tan seven novel writing 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. Amy Tan voice clever writing 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 luxury able way
