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0740a84
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But now that I am old, moving every year closer to the end of my life, I also feel closer to the beginning. And I remember everything that happened that day becasue it has happened many times in my life. The same innocence, trust, and restlessness; the wonder, fear, and lonliness. How I lost myself. I remember all these things. And tonight, on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, I also remember what I asked the Moon Lady so long ago. I w..
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Amy Tan |
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cdb3d83
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Chaos is the penance for leisure.
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Amy Tan |
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07c4965
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There's no hope. There's no reason to keep trying. Because you must. This is not hope. Not reason. This is your fate. This is your life, what you must do.
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Amy Tan |
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273b807
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Love is tricky. It is never mundane or daily. You can never get used to it. You have to walk with it, then let it walk with you. You can never balk. It moves you like the tide. It takes you out to sea, then lays you on the beach again. Today's struggling pain is the foundation for a certain stride through the heavens. You can run from it but you can never say no. It includes everyone.
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Amy Tan |
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2789771
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You can have pride in what you do each day, but not arrogance in what you were born with.
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Amy Tan |
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72086bc
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Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.
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gaara
katniss-and-peeta
gemma-doyle
humorist
future-plans
judgmental-people
humbleness
johnny-depp
keys
fury
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Amy Tan |
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4331865
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But I was no longer sacared. I could see what was inside me. -Lindo
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Amy Tan |
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8adec1d
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When you lose your face..., it is like dropping your necklace down a well. The only way you can get it back is to fall in after it.
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Amy Tan |
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80fe422
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Then she told me why a tiger is gold and black. It has two ways. The gold side leaps with its fierce heart. The black side stands still with cunning, hiding its gold between the trees, seeing and not being seen, waiting patiently for things to come. I did not learn to use my black side until after the bad man left me.
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robert-frank
keep-going
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Amy Tan |
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f234459
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We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.
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Amy Tan |
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9915e0d
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I know how it is to live your life like a dream. To listen and watch, to wake up and try to understand what has already happened. You do not need a psychiatrist to do this. A psychiatrist does not want you to wake up. He tells you to dream some more, to find the pond and pour more tears into it. And really, he is just another bird drinking from your misery. My mother, she suffered. She lost her face and tried to hind it. She found only gr..
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Amy Tan |
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48d5856
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If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too?
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Amy Tan |
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2e28c19
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Can I tell my daughter that I loved her father? This was the man who rubbed my feet at night. He praised the food that I cooked. He cried honestly when I brought out trinkets I had saved for the right day, the day he gave me my daughter, a tiger girl. How could I not love this man? But it was a love of a ghost. Arms that encircled but did not touch. A bowl full of rice but without my appetite to eat it. No hunger. No fullness. Now Saint i..
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love
mother
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Amy Tan |
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967ccf0
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She cried, 'No choice! No choice!' She doesn't know. If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever. I know this, because I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, to eat my own bitterness. and even though I taught my daughter the opposite, she still came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. ..
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Amy Tan |
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e45da90
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But I don't have anything left inside of me to figure out where I fit in or what I want. If I want anything, it's to know what's possible to want.
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Amy Tan |
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0c67d16
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Only two kinds of daughters, she shouted in Chinese. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!
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Amy Tan |
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95c9cc3
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Was there ever a true great love? Anyone who became the object of my obsession and not simply my affections? I honestly don't think so. In part, this was my fault. It was my nature, I suppose. I could not let myself be that unmindful. Isn't that what love is-losing your mind? You don't care what people think. You don't see your beloved's fault, the slight stinginess, the bit of carelessness, the occasional streak of meanness. You don't mind..
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Amy Tan |
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666d54f
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You can't have intentions without consequences. The question is, who pays for the consequences? Saving fish from drowning. Same thing. Who's saved? Who's not?
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Amy Tan |
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102961a
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It was a distorted form of inverse logic: If hopes never come true, then hope for what you don't want.
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Amy Tan |
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3b3b7c1
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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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strength-through-adversity
tears
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Amy Tan |
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af0166d
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They know where happiness lies, not in a cave or a country, but in love and the freedom to give and take what has been there all along.
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Amy Tan |
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51d4f3d
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Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this. Everyone else want best quality. You thinking different.
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jesus
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Amy Tan |
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26b96f8
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When you already believe something, how can you suddenly stop? When you are a loyal friend, how can you no longer be one?
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Amy Tan |
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dbfb826
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I take a few quick sips. "This is really good." And I mean it. I have never tasted tea like this. It is smooth, pungent, and instantly addicting. "This is from Grand Auntie," my mother explains. "She told me 'If I buy the cheap tea, then I am saying that my whole life has not been worth something better.' A few years ago she bought it for herself. One hundred dollars a pound." "You're kidding." I take another sip. It tastes even better."
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tea
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Amy Tan |
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e732027
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I saw what I had been fighting for: It was for me, a scared child, who had run away a long time ago to what I had imagined was a safer place. And hiding in this place, behind my invisible barriers, I knew what lay on the other side: Her side attacks. Her secret weapons. Her uncanny ability to find my weakest spots. But in the brief instant that I had peered over the barriers I could finally see what was finally there: an old woman, a wok fo..
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Amy Tan |
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719026e
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Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it - that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.
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Amy Tan |
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728e8a3
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When my daughter looks at me, she sees a small old lady. That is because she sees only with her outside eyes. She has no , no inside knowing of things. If she had , she would see a tiger lady. And she would have careful fear.
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Amy Tan |
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33c0c4f
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I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect for others, and eventually thought neither of us knew it at the time, chess games... Come from the South, blow from the wind -- poom!-- North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen.
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Amy Tan |
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befed35
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He asked if he could recite a poem he had written that morning: 'You speak,' he said, 'the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset. I want to follow its trail to eternity.
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Amy Tan |
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9093b04
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With hope, a mind is always free.
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Amy Tan |
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8444416
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So much of history is mystery. We don't know what is lost forever, what will surface again. All objects exist in a moment of time. And that fragment of time is preserved or lost or found in mysterious ways. Mystery is a wonderful part of life.
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mystery
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Amy Tan |
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731ce45
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Dementia was like a truth serum.
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truth
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Amy Tan |
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4be72e3
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For all these years I kept my mouth closed so selfish desires would not fall out. And because I remained quiet for so long now my daughter does not hear me... All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. And because I moved so secretly now my daughter does not see me... We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing; unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.
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Amy Tan |
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607a875
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He has always been politely indifferent. But what's the Chinese word that means indifferent because you can't any differences?
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Amy Tan |
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345c4ca
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We are living in a world where everything is false. The society is like bright paint applied on top of rotten wood.
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Amy Tan |
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8996035
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I have loved works of fiction precisely for their illusions, for the author's sleight-of-hand in showing me the magic, what appeared in the right hand but not in the left...
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Amy Tan |
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786b422
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Yesterday my daughter said to me, 'My marriage is falling apart.' And now all she can do is watch it falling.
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Amy Tan |
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f159b52
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It means we're looking one way, while following another. We're for one side and also the other. We mean what we say, but our intentions are different.
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Amy Tan |
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b3f335a
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Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don't you learn to play chess." - Ch. 5"
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Amy Tan |
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fa3ae52
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And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.
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Amy Tan |
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a27c16e
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While it is good to speak well, it is better to speak the truth.
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Amy Tan |
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49b4df8
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It's not that we had no heart or eyes for pain. We were all afraid. We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable...What was worse, to sit and wait for our own deaths with proper somber faces? Or to choose our own happiness? "So we decided to hold parties and pretend each week had become the new year. Each week we could forget past wrongs done to us. We weren't allo..
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Amy Tan |
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fa31e78
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American circumstances and Chiese character. How could I know these two things do not mix? I taught her how American circumstances work. If you are born poor here, it's no lasting shame. You are first in line for a scholarship. If the roof crashes on your head, no need to cry over this bad luck. You can sue anybody, make the landlord fix it. You do not have to sit like a Buddha under a tree letting pigeons drop their dirty business on your ..
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Amy Tan |
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4c011c9
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What do you think was the first sound to become a word, a meaning?...
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motherhood
words
mother-and-daughter
mother
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Amy Tan |