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e4cc919
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We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that's like saying you can never change your fate.
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fate
hope
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Amy Tan |
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4e8085e
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Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.
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Amy Tan |
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83450e5
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Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.
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Amy Tan |
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04c2654
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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?
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hope
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Amy Tan |
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e6f8336
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Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.
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Amy Tan |
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4233d4d
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I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.
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Amy Tan |
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1e04587
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Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?
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Amy Tan |
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ff6fa40
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Now you see,' said the turtle, drifting back into the pond, 'why it is useless to cry. Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else's joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.
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Amy Tan |
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85ab0e4
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That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.
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Amy Tan |
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b3c88ef
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Sure I loved him - too much. And he loved me, only not enough. I just want someone who thinks I'm number one in his life. I'm not willing to accept emotional scraps anymore.
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Amy Tan |
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40b77d3
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That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.
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hurt
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Amy Tan |
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053bb95
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We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. -Suyuan
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Amy Tan |
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5813593
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So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. the pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of tw..
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Amy Tan |
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5aad1d6
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Isn't that how it is when you must decide with your heart? You are not just choosing one thing over another. You are choosing what you want. And you are also choosing what somebody else does not want, and all the consequences that follow. You can tell yourself, That's not my problem, but those words do not wash the trouble away. Maybe it is no longer a problem in your life. But it is always a problem in your heart.
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Amy Tan |
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16d2a70
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I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind. -Lindo
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Amy Tan |
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93dabe8
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Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh. -An-mei
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Amy Tan |
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0473612
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You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.
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understanding
remembrance
knowledge
memory
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Amy Tan |
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8dcad82
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From what I have observed, when the anesthesia of love wears off, there is always the pain of consequences. You don't have to be stupid to marry the wrong man.
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Amy Tan |
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bee2c8c
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But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better. -Jing-mei
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Amy Tan |
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33ba8e1
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And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck"..
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women
joy
fear
family
hope
concepts
daughters
heritage
mothers
immigration
language
perception
ideas
tradition
luck
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Amy Tan |
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1d75329
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How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently?
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Amy Tan |
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809ae4d
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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 ..
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Amy Tan |
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121682c
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You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying. -An-mei
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Amy Tan |
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ee2a125
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I love and am loved, fully and freely, nothing expected, more than enough received.
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Amy Tan |
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2b346c4
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I won't be what I'm not. -Jing-mei
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Amy Tan |
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5f52889
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After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?
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past
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Amy Tan |
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39ca7af
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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.
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Amy Tan |
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be0245a
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Your life is what you see in front of you. -An-mei
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Amy Tan |
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1228352
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For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.
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Amy Tan |
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e29094a
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Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.
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fate
expectation
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Amy Tan |
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711b4c7
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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 emotiona..
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Amy Tan |
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a94d0da
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too much happiness always overflowed into tears of sorrow.
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sadness
happiness
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Amy Tan |
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4595ff2
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Thanks to my mother, I was raised to have a morbid imagination. When I was a child, she often talked about death as warning, as an unavoidable matter of fact. Little Debbie's mom down the block might say, 'Honey, look both ways before crossing the street.' My mother's version: 'You don't look, you get smash flat like sand dab.' (Sand dabs were the cheap fish we bought live in the market, distinguished in my mind by their two eyes affixed on..
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truth
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Amy Tan |
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b8107f6
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wisdom is like a bottomless pond. You throw stones in and they sink into darkness and dissolve. Her eyes looking back do not reflect anything. I think this to myself even though I love my daughter. She and I have shared the same body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another..
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relationship
mother
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Amy Tan |
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e1121f9
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All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. -Ying Ying
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Amy Tan |
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2b0c7e1
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Too many good things all seem the same after a while.
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Amy Tan |
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de8e4a5
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To come so far, to lose so much and to find nothing. -Jing-mei
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Amy Tan |
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188b00b
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What is the past but what we choose to remember?
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past
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Amy Tan |
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ef93e49
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Don't think too much. That makes you believe you have more choices than you do. Then you mind becomes confused.
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Amy Tan |
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b995072
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That is the saddest part when you lose someone you love - that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost? Maybe you lost more maybe less, then thousand different things that come from your memory or imagination - and you do not know which is which, which was true, which is false.
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Amy Tan |
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a4278ca
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A pious man explained to his followers: 'It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. "Don't be scared," I tell those fishes. "I am saving you from drowning." Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it..
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Amy Tan |
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87001f2
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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.
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Amy Tan |
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9b7af71
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And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.
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Amy Tan |
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46f7112
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A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.
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mothers
simple
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Amy Tan |