Amy Tan Quotes & Sayings (Page 4)

“I didn't fear failure. I expected failure.”

“I like to go somewhere where I learn something I didn't know before, like the Dry Tortugas between Florida and Cuba.”

“I don't steer clear of genres. I simply haven't steered myself toward some of them.”

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

“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.”

“My writing often contains souvenirs of the day - a song I heard, a bird I saw - which I then put into the novel.”

“I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.”

“I'm open to reading almost anything - fiction, nonfiction - as long as I know from the first sentence or two that this is a voice I want to listen to for a good long while. It has much to do with imagery and language, a particular perspective, the assured knowledge of the particular universe the writer has created.”

“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.”

“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.”