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" My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten. "
Amy Tan
Time
Me
High
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" 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. "
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People
" It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success. "
Amy Tan
Rebellion
Success
Conformity
" There is this myth, that America is a melting pot, but what happens in assimilation is that we end up deliberately choosing the American things - hot dogs and apple pie - and ignoring the Chinese offerings. "
Amy Tan
End
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Pie
" 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
Parents
Care
Job
" Our uniqueness makes us special, makes perception valuable - but it can also make us lonely. This loneliness is different from being 'alone': You can be lonely even surrounded by people. The feeling I'm talking about stems from the sense that we can never fully share the truth of who we are. I experienced this acutely at an early age. "
Amy Tan
Age
Loneliness
Truth
" In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you. "
Amy Tan
America
You
Nobody
" No one can travel your own road for you; you must travel it for yourself. My faith in this stems from my childhood. I grew up in a family with a system of religious beliefs handed down to me. "
Amy Tan
Childhood
Travel
Road
" I am an American, steeped in American values. But I know on an emotional level what it means to be of the Chinese culture. "
Amy Tan
Know
Values
Culture
" I have many reasons why I think reading is really important. It provided for me a refuge, especially during difficult times. It provided me with the notion that I could find an ending that was different from what was happening to me at the time. "
Amy Tan
Time
Think
Me
" My breakfast is usually a wholegrain cereal or porridge, with walnuts sprinkled in it, berries, a tablespoon of honey, and chia seeds. I have coffee and a little cherry juice with seltzer. I have a seat by the window, and I look out at the view. "
Amy Tan
Honey
Window
Breakfast
" 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. "
Amy Tan
Perspective
Good
Reading
" God, life changes faster than you think. "
Amy Tan
God
Think
Life Changes
" I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression. "
Amy Tan
Choice
Enough
Freedom
" My mother believed in curses, karma, good luck, bad luck, feng shui. Her amorphous set of beliefs showed me you can pick and choose the qualities of your philosophy, based on what works for you. "
Amy Tan
Luck
Mother
Me
" Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses. "
Amy Tan
Inspiration
Universe
Where
" I went to an exhibition at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum about Shanghai, about how courtesans had been influential in bringing western culture to Shanghai. I bought a book and in it saw this striking group of women in a photograph called 'The Ten Beauties of Shanghai'. "
Amy Tan
Women
Group
Museum
" I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water. "
Amy Tan
Pain
Water
Face
" I felt ashamed of being different and ashamed of feeling that way. "
Amy Tan
Feeling
Way
Being Different
" When you read about the lives of other people, people of different circumstances or similar circumstances, you are part of their lives for that moment. You inhabit their lives, and you feel what they're feeling, and that is compassion. If we see that reading does allow us that, we see how absolutely essential reading is. "
Amy Tan
You
Reading
Compassion
" I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person. "
Amy Tan
Person
Myself
Mother
" 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. "
Amy Tan
Mother
Happy
Time
" 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
You
Routine
" 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
She
Think
Understand
" It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life. "
Amy Tan
Being
You
Think