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aea1232
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You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.
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Amy Tan |
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d3b892d
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My sisters and I stand, arms around each other, laughind and wiping the tears from each others eyes. The flash of the Polaroid goes off and my family hands me the snapshot. My sisters and I watch quietly together, eager to see what develops. Ghe grey-greensurface changes to the bright colors of our three images, sharpening and deepening all at once. And although we don't speak, I know we all see it: Together we look like our mother. Her sa..
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Amy Tan |
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21f6d17
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You don't care what people think. You don't see your beloved's faults, the slight stinginess, the bit of carelessness, the occasional streak of meanness. You don't mind that he is beneath you socially, educationally, financially, and morally--that's the worst, I think, deficient morals. (Saving Fish From Drowning)
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Amy Tan |
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0e2aa4c
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How I saw in her my own true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside my bones... Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain. This is how a daughter honors her mother. It is shou so deep it is in your bones. The pain of the flesh is nothing. The pain you must forget. 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 h..
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Amy Tan |
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0f1abc3
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She would be quiet at first. Then she would say a word about something small, something she had noticed, and then another word, and another, each one flung out like a little piece of sand, one from this direction, another form behind, more and more, until his looks, his character, his soul would have eroded away . . . I was afraid that some unseen speck of truth would fly into my eye, blur what I was seeing and transform him from the divine..
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relationships
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Amy Tan |
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ea5b48d
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I saw a girl complaining that the pain of not being seen was unbearable... Now I have perfect understanding. I have already experienced the worst. After this, there is no worse possible thing.
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Amy Tan |
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26c58a3
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As she grew older, she was aware of her changing position on mortality. In her youth, the topic of death was philosophical; in her thirties it was unbearable and in her forties unavoidable. In her fifties, she had dealt with it in more rational terms, arranging her last testament, itemizing assets and heirlooms, spelling out the organ donation, detailing the exact words for her living will. Now, in her sixties, she was back to being philoso..
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death
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Amy Tan |
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41f1649
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You can't stay in the dark for too long. Something inside you starts to fade, and you become like a starving person, crazy-hungry for light.
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light
desperation
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Amy Tan |
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24cd571
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When I returned home that day, I saw my life as if I already knew the happy ending of a story. I looked around the house and thought, soon I will no longer have to see these walls and all the unhappiness they keep inside.
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Amy Tan |
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9e91ac1
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What should we do?", I asked, and I had a pained feeling I thought was the beginning of love. In those early months we clung to each other with a rather silly desperation, because, in spite of everything my mother or Mrs Jordan could say, there was nothing that really prevented us from seeing each other. With imagined tragedy hovering over us, we became inseparable, two halves creating the whole: yin and yang. I was victim to his hero. I w..
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relationship
love
victim
hero
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Amy Tan |
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d423ba1
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I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control.
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Amy Tan |
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d1c215d
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All objects exist in a moment of time.
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time
object
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Amy Tan |
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34eb1c0
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And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind.
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Amy Tan |
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faff069
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Dementia. Ruth puzzled over the diagnosis: How could such a beautiful-sounding word apply to such a destructive disease? It was a name befitting a goddess: Dementia, who caused her sister Demeter to forget to turn winter into spring.
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Amy Tan |
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1359797
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I still don't know which way I would teach you. I was once so free and innocent. I too laughed for no reason. But later I threw away my foolish innocence to protect myself. And then I taught my daughter, your mother, to shed her innocence so she would not be hurt as well. Hwai dungsyi, was this kind of thinking wrong? If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too? If I see someone has a suspicious nose, h..
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Amy Tan |
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061df24
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If you are greedy, what is inside you is what makes you always hungry.
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Amy Tan |
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2536295
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It isn't that i consider them brave, they are reckless, unpredictable, maddeningly unreliable. But like rogue waves and shooting stars, they also add thrills to a life that otherwise would be as regular as the tide, as routine as day passing into night.
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Amy Tan |
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fecdf81
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I was no longer scared. I could see what was inside me.
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Amy Tan |
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62b3abf
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we were like two people standing apart on separate mountain peaks, recklessly leaning forward to throw stones at one another, unaware of the dangerous chasm that separated us.
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Amy Tan |
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9872f7e
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In this matter, you should not concern yourself for my sake.
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Amy Tan |
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cd7008c
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Lately I have been feeling hulihudu. And everything around me seemed to be heimongmong. These were words I had never thought about in English terms. I suppose the closest in meaning would be "confused" and "dark fog." But really, the words mean much more than that. Maybe they can't be easily translated because they refer to a sensation that only Chinese people have, as if you were falling headfirst through Old Mr. Chou's [Mr. Sandman's] do..
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Amy Tan |
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2ca6ee9
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the world is not a place but the vastness of the soul. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true. . .And believing in ghosts - that's believing that love never dies. 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.
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Amy Tan |
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f267272
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A painting was a translation of the language of my heart.
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painting
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Amy Tan |
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739fa8e
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If someone offers to take your burden, you need to know he is serious, not just being polite and kind. Polite and kind do not last.
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Amy Tan |
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d4a582b
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Because I think to myself, even today, how can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?
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Amy Tan |
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56cf729
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People there only dream that it is China, because if you are Chinese you can never let go of China in your mind.
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Amy Tan |
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ce13c00
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Seeing her this last time, I threw myself on her body. And she opened her eyes slowly. I was not scared. I knew she could see me and what she had finally done. So i shut her eyes with my fingers and told her with my heart: I cah see the truth, too. I am strong, too.
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Amy Tan |
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a3ec411
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But later that day, the streets of Kweilin were strewn with newspapers reporting great Kuomintang victories, and on top of these papers, like fresh fish from a butcher, lay rows of people - men, women and children who had never lost hope, but had lost their lives instead.
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Amy Tan |
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5cc2a7e
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Now I was a tiger that neither pounced nor lay waiting between the trees. I became an unseen spirit.
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Amy Tan |
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70c505b
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If you asked me how I felt when they told me I would marry Wen Fu, I can say only this: It was like being told I had won a big prize. And it was also like being told my head was going to be chopped off. Something between those two feelings.
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Amy Tan |
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de7e0f7
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I hated the tests the raised hopes and failed expectations." - Two Kinds" --
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Amy Tan |
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400dd16
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Forever did not mean what it once had. Forever was what changed inevitably over time.
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Amy Tan |
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f0902bd
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To save myself, I destroyed another, and in doing so, I destroyed myself.
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Amy Tan |
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693b3c8
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Hardships can harden even the best person.
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Amy Tan |
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5399347
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The things one had to do in life sometimes had nothing to do with what was fun or convenient.
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Amy Tan |
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7d47f2e
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Ying-ying, you have tiger eyes. They gather fire in the day. At night they shine golden.
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Amy Tan |
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c1b49e0
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I had always assumed we had an unspoken understanding about these things: that she didn't really mean I was a failure, and I really meant I would try to respect her opinions more. But listening to Auntie Lin tonight reminds me once agian: My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other's meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more. No doubt she told Auntie Lin I was going b..
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Amy Tan |
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3844aa7
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I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents' promiise. This means nothing to you, because to you promises mean nothing... But later, she will forget her promise. She will forget she had a grandmother.
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Amy Tan |
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721db3e
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What is true about a person? Would I change in the same way the river changes color but still be the same person?... And then I realized it was the first time I could see the power of the wind. I couldn't see the wind itself, but I could see it carried water that filled the rivers and shaped the countryside.
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Amy Tan |
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815fe04
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A mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place. She teaches you the nature of happiness: what is the right amount, what is too much, and the kind that makes you want more of what is bad for you. A mother helps her baby flex her first feelings of pleasure. She teaches her when to later exercise restraint, or to take squealing joy in recognizing the fluttering leaves of the gingko tree, to sense a quieter but more profound satisf..
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mothers
pleasure
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Amy Tan |
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02068ce
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Lack of clarity is a writer's truth.
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Amy Tan |
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22ef726
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I thought this man had long ago drained everything from my heart. But now something strong and bitter flowed and made me feel another emptiness in a place I didn't know was there. I cursed this man aloud so he could hear. You had dog eyes. You jumped and followed whoever called you. Now you chase your own tail.
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Amy Tan |
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a4ae236
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What is a secret wish?" "It is what you want but cannot ask."
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Amy Tan |
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9b8d62b
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When you touch a man's nostalgia, he is yours.
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Amy Tan |