Quotes By Amy Tan

No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.

Words to me were magic. You could say a word and it could conjure up all kinds of images or feelings or a chilly sensation or whatever. It was amazing to me that words had this power.

It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.

We are the kind of people who obsess over one word... but we have only one shot to get it right in concert. It was hard the first time I practiced with them. I was so nervous that my vocal chords were paralyzed for about a half-hour.

In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.

I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.

My mother said I was a clingy kid until I was about four. I also remember that from the age of eight she and I fought almost every day.