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74e2a55
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I think Kwan intended to show me 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.
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Amy Tan |
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0f1ee3a
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Auntie Yang is not hard of hearing. She is hard of listening.
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listening
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Amy Tan |
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703c4bc
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The farther you move from the core of the problem, the faster the situation spins out of control.
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Amy Tan |
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42e78bc
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What do you think was the very first sound to become a word, a meaning?' ... And then I realized what the first word must have been: ma, the sound of a baby smacking its lips in search of her mother's breast. Ma, ma, ma. Then the mother decided that was her name and she began to speak, too. She taught the baby to be careful: sky, fire, tiger. A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.
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Amy Tan |
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5d0fd82
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Life's always a big fucking compromise. You don't always get what you want, no matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how good you are. That's a myth. We're all hanging in the best way we can.
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life
hundred-secret-senses
asian-american
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Amy Tan |
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3950702
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I was greedy, she warned, and could not fill my heart with enough pleasure, my stomach with enough contentment, my body with enough sleep. I was like a rice basket with a rat hole at the bottom, and thus could not be satisfied and overflow, nor could I be filled. I would never know the full depth and breadth of love, beauty, or happiness. She said it like a curse.
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Amy Tan |
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88f5e7a
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Everybody looked down on someone else. It didn't matter that everybody shared the same sidewalk to spit on and suffered the same fast-moving diarrhea. We all had the same stink, but everybody complained someone else smelled the worst.
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Amy Tan |
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691323e
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He saw all those private aspects of me - and I mean not just sexual private parts, but my darker side, my meanness, my pettiness, my self-loathing - all the things I kept hidden. So that with him I was completely naked, and when I was feeling the most vulnerable - when the wrong word would have sent me flying out the door forever - he always said exactly the right thing at the right moment. He didn't allow me to cover myself up. He would gr..
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Amy Tan |
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47f8d3d
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Even when I worked in that world, I still wanted love so strong that the man would have no interest in another woman. Maybe you will always be incapable of giving that kind of love. You tell me I want too much. And maybe I do. But like you and your imagination, I can't help but be that way.
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men
women
love
loyalty
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Amy Tan |
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4136934
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Memory, in fact, gives you no choice over which moments you can erase, and it is annoyingly persistent in retaining the most painful ones. It is extraordinarily faithful in recording the most hideous details, and it will recall them for you in the future with moments that are even only vaguely similar.
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Amy Tan |
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75c509c
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When you are told, "It was meant to be," ask, "Who meant it? What does it really mean?" Is someone trying to make you accept an undesirable situation or one in which you have doubts? When you are told, "Shit happens," remember that plenty of other things happen as well, such as generosity, forgiveness, ambiguity, and uncertainty. When you are told, "It's simply fate," ask yourself, "What is simple about it? What are the alternatives of fate..
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Amy Tan |
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c926ea9
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I am ashamed she is ashamed. Because she is my daughter and I am proud of her, and I am her mother but she is not proud of me.
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lindo-jong
the-joy-luck-club
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Amy Tan |
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758e331
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i'm not saying fate happens without blame. but when fate turns out well, everyone should forget the bad road that got us here.
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Amy Tan |
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46982c4
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Every word, every gesture is now loaded with ambiguity, nothing can be taken at face value. We speak to each other from a safe distance, pretending all the years we soaped each other's backs and pissed in front of each other never happened. We don't use any of the baby talk, code words, or short hand gestures that had been our language of intimacy, the proof that we belonged to each other.
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Amy Tan |
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03c2f4e
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This is the kind of China you Americans always see in the movies - the poor countryside, people wearing big hats to protect themselves from the sun. No, I never wore a hat like that! I was from Shanghai. That's like thinking someone from San Francisco wears a cowboy hat and rides a horse. Ridiculous!
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Amy Tan |
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c4f523f
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Whenever others disapprove of you, you must disregard them and be the only
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Amy Tan |
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8ee4a29
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And now at the airport, after shaking hands with everybody, waving good-bye, I think about all the different ways we leave people in this world. Cheerily waving good-bye to some at airports, knowing we'll never see each other again. Leaving others on the side of the road, hoping that we will. Finding my mother in my father's story and saying good-bye before I have a chance to know her better.
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loss
good-byes
memory
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Amy Tan |
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1fa243d
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When the anesthesia of love wears off, you suffer the pain of consequence.
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heartbreak
love
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Amy Tan |
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6842ddb
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Maybe the kind of love that would comfort me did not exist. Perhaps I expected too much of love and no one existed who could ever meet my unceasing and bottomless need for it.
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Amy Tan |
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4d5ca7d
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These days I realize that faith and fate have similar effects on the believer. They suggest that a higher power knows the next move and that we are at the mercy of that force. They differ, among other things, in how you try to cull beneficence and what you do to avoid disaster.
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Amy Tan |
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312ec36
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But it was the 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.
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Amy Tan |
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14acd7e
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I had thus learned to push down my feelings, to force myself to not care, to do nothing and let things happen, come what may.
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Amy Tan |
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759045f
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We were all afraid. We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable.
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Amy Tan |
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c067ae9
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I read to escape to a more interesting world, not to be locked up in a sweltering prison and find myself vicariously standing among people who are tortured beyond the limits of sanity.
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Amy Tan |
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8a2dc07
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It was our fate and our natures, flawed and wounded, that brought us together - Violet Minturn
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Amy Tan |
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85691b5
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The old woman remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum. This bird, boasted the market vendor, was once a duck that stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goose, and now look!--it is too beautiful to eat.
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the-joy-luck-club
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Amy Tan |
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cfca417
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Avoid generalizations. As a fiction writer, I distrust absolute truths, homilies, bromides, sound bites, and also shorthand advice of the sort I'm giving. I like specifics, the longhand version of a story in which it takes four hundred pages to answer a single question about a person's character. Literary writers, unless they are writing fairly tales, learn early never to have characters who are polar opposites, one "good," the other "evil...
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Amy Tan |
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33c3b1a
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I love my shadow, this dark side of me that had my same restless nature.
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Amy Tan |
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958afb7
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Writing is the witness to myself about myself. Whatever others say of me or how they interpret me is a simulacrum of their own devising.
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writing
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Amy Tan |
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0a83fdb
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Being a dominatrix gave me the ultimate power: to sing without self-consciousness.
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inspirational
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Amy Tan |
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8df478a
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Precious Auntie, what is our name? I always meant to claim it as my own. Come help me remember. I'm not a little girl anymore. I'm not afraid of ghosts. Are you still mad at me? Don't you recognize me? I am LuLing, your daughter.
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Amy Tan |
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5ec32f9
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And all that talk about the breakup being good for us- who am I trying to fool? I'm cut loose, untethered, not belonging to anything or anybody.
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Amy Tan |
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db6d82a
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Was there ever a great true love? Anyone who became the object of my obsession and not simply my affections?...I could not let myself become 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 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 -..
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love
morals
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Amy Tan |
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5290c6f
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Now they seemed to be in a contest over who could irritate her more, and she sometimes had to remind herself that teenagers had souls
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teenagers
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amy tan |
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ed58c40
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If I stopped running and stood still, I would be accepting that what I had was all I would ever have. And then I would no longer be lost, because there would nowhere else to go
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Amy Tan |
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7db5ae5
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I ask myself, How can I relax? How can I let go of everything that's happened? You need complete trust to do that.
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Amy Tan |
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2abca2d
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A moment is not the same as time.
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Amy Tan |
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4b2c133
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In It's Only Temporary, Evan Handler confronts the ambiguities of life backward, forward, and in between. With hilarious honesty he reflects on the realization that we can start over again. It's Only Temporary is a heartfelt book for all of us who are getting younger and older at the same time.
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Amy Tan |
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85bd861
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Later they will remember those moments with you. But they are not memories of you, but the feeling they were immortal because you made them gods.
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Amy Tan |
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dc27394
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And now at the airport, after shaking hands with everybody, waving good-bye, I think about all the different ways we leave people in this world. Cheerily waving good-bye to some at airports, knowing we'll never see each other again. Leaving others on the side of the road, hoping that we will. Finding my mother in my father's story and saying good-bye before before I have a chance to know her better.
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loss
good-bye
memory
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Amy Tan |
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ec54b90
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Chinese people do business, do medicine, do painting. Not lazy like American people. We do torture. Best torture.
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Amy Tan |
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53d58e8
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Que es el pasado si no aquello que elegimos recordar?
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Amy Tan |
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f5c4590
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Solo recuerdas lo que quieres recordar. Solo sabes lo que tu corazon te permite saber.
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Amy Tan |
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f135257
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Forget about love. You will receive that many times, but none of it is lasting.
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Amy Tan |