What is the past but what we choose to remember?

— Amy Tan

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 was always in danger and he was always rescuing me. Furthermore, I would fall and he would lift me up. It was exhilarating and draining. The emotional effect of saving and being saved was addicting to both of us. And that, as much as anything we ever did in bed, was how we made love to each other: conjoined where my weaknesses needed protection.

— Amy Tan

When a husband stops paying attention to the garden, he's thinking of pulling up roots.

— Amy Tan

Whenever I'm with my [teenager] I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.

— Amy Tan

When the anesthesia of love wears off, you suffer the pain of consequence.

— Amy Tan

Why would any writer in her right mind ever consider making a movie instead? That's like going from being a monk or a nun to serving as a camp counselor for hundreds of problem children.

— Amy Tan

Wisdom is like a bottomless pond. You throw stones in, and they sink into darkness and dissolve. Her eyes looking back do not reflect anything. I think this to myself even though I love my daughter. She and I have shared the same body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore.

— Amy Tan

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.

— Amy Tan

You can never be an artist if your work comes without effort. That is the problem with modern ink from a bottle. You do not have to think. You simply write what is swimming on the top of your brain. And the top is nothing but pond scum, dead leaves, and mosquito spawn. But when you push an ink stick along an ink stone, you take the first step to cleansing your mind and your heart. You push, and you ask yourself, What are my intentions? What is my heart that matches my mind?

— Amy Tan

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.

— Amy Tan