If you can't change your fate change your attitude.

— Amy Tan

If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.

— Amy Tan

If you want to take pictures of Chinese food, you have to taste real Chinese food. The flavors soak into your tongue, go into your stomach. The stomach is where your true feelings are. And if you take photos, these true feelings from your stomach can come out, so that everyone can taste the food just by looking at your pictures.

— Amy Tan

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.

— Amy Tan

I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer, the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and, in that respect, I liked Bible stories, because to me, they were very gothic.

— Amy Tan

I now lived in an invisible place made of my own dwindling breath, and because no one else could see it, they could not yank me out of it.

— Amy Tan

I take a few quick sips. "This is perfect." 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.

— Amy Tan

It felt like all the truth got whitewashed with fake happiness," she said, "only it was not happy, and it was worse than fake. It was dangerous

— Amy Tan

I think I've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success.

— Amy Tan

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

— Amy Tan