"I meet writers these days. I remember one who sat at the foot of Thomas Mann and was reading Flaubert in French when she was 15. I wonder what kind of writer I would have been if I had had that kind of privileged upbringing."

Rating:

  rate this quote
Topic: none  help us select a topic for this quote

More quotes from: Amy Tan

• "A lot of bad things have happened in my life. I never believed the sort ..."
• "After a number of years of going crazy over this, I don't read any of ..."
• "All of us go through angst and identity crises. And even when you write in ..."
• "Also, because the rhythms, the prose style of the Bible is, of course, very influential, ..."
• "And she said, 'It's not too late; tell the world, tell the world what happened ..."
• "And so she was very proud, because she measured success in terms of money, which ..."
• "And we have a Constitution, a tradition, a culture that supports that. I hope it ..."
• "Anything that was unreasonable, I said was Chinese so I made the culture the scapegoat. ..."
• "At the time I was doing business writing, I also had a friend who introduced ..."
• "Because they were doing exactly what they loved to do, and what ended up being ..."
• "But there were differences as well. And my sisters, who had grown up thinking that ..."
• "By the time it came to the second book, I was so freaked out, I ..."
• "Certainly all of us have gone through fights with partners in our life, but that's ..."
• "Do things repeat themselves? What in human nature is inherited versus self-determined? All of those ..."
• "For myself, it's very personal. So I have a hard time accepting what is said ..."
• "Getting this story out, I realized, was a gift that she was giving me. And ..."
• "God, life changes faster than you think. "
• "He despaired, and he went into depression and he began to sleep a lot. A ..."
• "History really is a record of behaviors and intentions and actions and consequences. So, I ..."
• "I actually started doing some other kinds of writing before I wrote the fiction. I ..."
• "I also begin to think there are things in life that we don't understand, that ..."
• "I also grew up, thankfully, with a love of language. That may have happened because ..."
• "I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. ..."
• "I also worry about those who praise my work for what I think are the ..."
• "I always thought philosophy was one of the most useless subjects in the world. It's ..."
• "I ask people now and they say, 'You were a great kid, you were so ..."
• "I could already see how people were treating me differently. That's the scary thing. "
• "I did see all of those things, and even more. I discovered how American I ..."
• "I did some writing in class when I was young just as everybody did. I ..."
• "I did what my father always did. He was a minister. I tried to be ..."
• "I didn't do anything about it for a long time, because, like many people, I ..."
• "I didn't fear failure. I expected failure. "
• "I didn't want to become a suspicious person. Those were the things that helped me ..."
• "I disagreed with him a little bit more forcefully and I said that I get ..."
• "I discovered a sense of finally belonging to a period of history which I never ..."
• "I do look at the photos of myself and see how I age each year, ..."
• "I don't feel the need to be a role model, it's just something that's been ..."
• "I don't know where I got that feeling. Possibly from my father, since he was ..."
• "I don't regret it at all. I grew up in a family that didn't speak ..."
• "I don't see myself, for example, writing about cultural dichotomies, but about human connections. "
• "I don't think that necessarily is the case but I think these failures can have ..."
• "I don't think Zoloft's made me a Pollyanna. I can still get angry and upset, ..."
• "I felt very grown up when I was able to read To Kill a Mockingbird. ..."
• "I find it happening less here partly because people are more aware now of the ..."
• "I found out later that he had seduced a young girl, left his wife and ..."
• "I go back to this idea that I only discovered when I was older. I ..."
• "I had a chance, for one thing, to move away and not tell anybody what ..."
• "I had a partner, a business partner, who ended up cheating me, as a matter ..."
• "I had an agent who, by luck, read my stuff in a little magazine and ..."
• "I have a good imagination, but I could never imagine my ancestors having been in ..."
• "I have a writer's memory which makes everything worse than maybe it actually was. "
• "I just sit by myself, being in my own mind, not being directed at what ..."
• "I kind of forgot about that later. My parents said, 'You're going to be a ..."
• "I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a ..."
• "I look back as an adult now, and I say, 'They only wanted the best ..."
• "I loved all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, Little House on the Prairie, Little House ..."
• "I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I ..."
• "I reached a point where I had infuriated my mother so much we nearly killed ..."
• "I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not ..."
• "I realize now that some of the stuff that happened to me was simply the ..."
• "I realize now that the most important thing that is an American Dream - in ..."
• "I realized that - although it was fiction and none of that had ever happened ..."
• "I realized that was the reason for writing fiction. Through that, this subversion of myself, ..."
• "I remember all of my teachers. I think of them all as being very kind ..."
• "I remember once one of my playmates from around the corner died, probably of leukemia. ..."
• "I remember that starting at the age of six I had thoughts of suicide. My ..."
• "I said how I had given 17 cents, which was my entire life savings at ..."
• "I said to myself when I was 17, 'I'm not going to have anything to ..."
• "I said to the woman that I had been thinking of doing some fiction writing ..."
• "I said, 'I'm not really a fiction writer. I don't need an agent. But if ..."
• "I saw in China that she got in arguments with Chinese people. She was just ..."
• "I saw my mother in a different light. We all need to do that. You ..."
• "I saw Rachel's hands clasped over her chest, and her face was bloodless, and her ..."
• "I see this all the time in myself. Should I do this? It's just easier ..."
• "I started a second novel seven times and I had to throw them away. "
• "I still did a lot of things out of anger for a while. I was ..."
• "I still have to think about that over and over again, with everything I do ..."
• "I think a lot about death because of what's happened in my life. And I ..."
• "I think a spirit of generosity and kindness is extremely important. People forget that, in ..."
• "I think any mother worries about her daughter losing herself to some boy and ruining ..."
• "I think I was a gloomy kid. I was trying to behave, trying to be ..."
• "I think I've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who ..."

• "I think of population and the demands on the earth. There are all these people ..."
• "I think self-knowledge is important and that embraces so many things. It means that when ..."
• "I think that I was in the right time and the right place. I met ..."
• "I think that this is a country where that opportunity - to be as wild ..."
• "I think that, in part, also made me a writer, a certain stubborn streak. I'm ..."
• "I think the conflicts were both cultural and generational. They are cultural if you're raised ..."
• "I think the cultural issues can sometimes confuse the generational ones. I'll give you an ..."
• "I think the rebellious side came about because I thought I was never going to ..."
• "I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I ..."
• "I thought it would ruin things, because at that moment in my life I was ..."
• "I thought my life was over then, that all chances of ever going to college ..."
• "I thought the lesson he taught my brother was a total disillusionment about the consequences ..."
• "I thought, 'Bull, why would somebody allow such pain to happen to anybody?' It's so ..."
• "I took this trip to China as a way of fulfilling a promise. I thought ..."
• "I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn't ..."
• "I wanted to bury it so that what I thought was the stronger, more independent, ..."
• "I wanted to see where she had lived, I wanted to see the family members ..."
• "I wanted to write stories for myself. At first it was purely an aesthetic thing ..."
• "I was at a stage where that kind of criticism didn't dishearten me at all. ..."
• "I was forbidden from reading the Harrad Experiment and also a book called Psychopathia Sexualis, ..."
• "I was in a school in the third grade and they were thinking of skipping ..."
• "I was in kindergarten and there was a little girl who I didn't think was ..."
• "I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom ..."
• "I was nervous about it because it meant three weeks with my mother, and I ..."
• "I was told what I was supposed to do when I was growing up, so ..."
• "I wasn't in love with him when I first met him, but I knew he ..."
• "I welcome criticism when I'm writing my books. I want to become better and better ..."
• "I went through a terrible period of feeling that I had lost my privacy, that ..."
• "I went to a writer's workshop. I met a wonderful writer there named Molly Giles. ..."
• "I worry about that within myself. I worry about the contradictions. I know it's part ..."
• "I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call ..."
• "I would still like to have that luxury, to be able to just sit and ..."
• "I wrote about a girl whose parents were educated, were professors at MIT. There was ..."
• "I wrote an essay called 'What the Library Means to Me' when I was eight ..."
• "I'm a fairly skeptical person. I'm educated, I'm reasonably sane, and I know that this ..."
• "I'm a very strong advocate for freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and the danger ..."
• "I'm the worst at coming up with the single word, which is the reason why ..."
• "I've had a lot of death in my life, of people who have been close ..."
• "I've learned that achievement is a sense, what - more importantly - is a sense ..."
• "If it didn't sell a single copy, if it was panned, that whole time I ..."
• "If my parents knew how much I loved reading, I thought they would take it ..."
• "If you blew it - you got a 'D' on something because you stayed up ..."
• "If you get this kind of review then you worry about what's going to happen ..."
• "In fact, one of the subjects I hated the most was history. I thought it ..."
• "In no other country do you have that opportunity. It's not to say that everything ..."
• "It didn't matter to my mother that I was writing fiction, because I still had ..."
• "It is that self-determination of your identity, to define what it means to be an ..."
• "It terrified me when I got to wondering if that was something I really could ..."
• "It took me a long time to get over that, and just finally being able ..."
• "It took me a long time to understand what the American Dream was. I always ..."
• "It was scary to live but it was scarier to die. I remember just saying, ..."
• "It was wonderful going to a country where suddenly the landscape, the geography, the history ..."
• "It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life. "
• "It's a wonderful way to observe life, because so much of life is not simply ..."
• "It's an implied sense of their worth being determined by others. It's a horrible feeling, ..."
• "It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success. "
• "It's fascinating and that makes every life worth living. It makes you see in everybody ..."
• "It's hard to believe, but this feeling changes over time. So many people feel this ..."
• "It's important to give others a sense of hope that it is possible and you ..."
• "It's important to understand their motivations, their intentions, where those beliefs derive from and then ..."
• "It's like a little mantra I hear: 'Not interesting, not interesting, not interesting.' I lie ..."
• "It's not as though I came to one crisis, overcame that, and the rest of ..."
• "It's not just some philosophical babble of how things repeat themselves. You see the undercurrents ..."
• "It's not simply material ones or environmental ones. I worry about ethical ones, moral ones, ..."
• "It's only later that you see what the connections might have been and how it ..."
• "It's very gothic to have a little boy killing a giant, somebody's head being served ..."
• "Just be open to it and never let yourself despair that this is it. "
• "Kwan comes strictly from my imagination, from that world of yin that I write about. ..."
• "Like in Las Vegas when the bells go off, telling you you've hit the jackpot. ..."
• "Molly said, 'If I were you, I would start over again and take each one ..."
• "My books and my stories are about families, so why wouldn't I tell them the ..."
• "My brother was a straight 'A' student, brilliant, was going to graduate at age 16. ..."
• "My husband and I had been married for a long time, we were happy, we ..."
• "My mother had a very difficult childhood, having seen her own mother kill herself. So ..."
• "My mother said I was a clingy kid until I was about four. I also ..."
• "My mother wanted to know. Why wasn't my picture in that window? I was very ..."
• "My mother, meanwhile, all the time kept saying, 'Write my true story. That's all you ..."
• "My mother, though, got equally angry at the relative and said, 'For so many years, ..."
• "My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the ..."
• "My parents told me I would become a doctor and then in my spare time ..."
• "No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have ..."

• "None of that responsibility crap, 'You owe it to your family. You have to do ..."
• "Not simply each year, but each month - I mean, talk about pressure - to ..."
• "Now, growing up in an American culture, of course, I also had other models. I ..."
• "Oh, my God, here is somebody who is just starting out and it's going to ..."
• "One day, after being told one of these stories didn't work, I thought, 'I'm just ..."
• "One relative felt that the story of my grandmother should not have been revealed. My ..."
• "Other Asian-American writers just shudder when they are compared to me; it really denigrates the ..."
• "People said I was crazy, that I was a workaholic. And I couldn't understand how ..."
• "People will say I've done a great service in helping with generational gaps. I don't ..."
• "Pesticides might have led to leukemia and killed this little girl. My mother had this ..."
• "Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden. "
• "Reading for me was a refuge. I could escape from everything that was miserable in ..."
• "Really, what my mother wants is for me to think that what she has to ..."
• "She had no choice in the kind of life she was given because she could ..."
• "She hounded me until I wrote a couple more stories and then she sold that ..."
• "She said 'I'm by commission. You don't have to pay anything until you sell anything.' ..."
• "She said, 'Look at this. Here you have a voice, and it's inconsistent with this ..."
• "So he said, 'Cheer up, it's not that bad.' And he threw me on the ..."
• "So I grew up thinking that I would never, ever please my parents. That is ..."
• "So if you were to say to me when I was 17, 'You know, one ..."
• "So, for that entire year, because I had learned all the lessons that year - ..."
• "So, I say, 'If I die, who's going to be waiting for me on the ..."
• "Some of these characters have to be foils. I needed a mother who was kind ..."
• "Some people are going to lose out, but there also might be some compromises made ..."
• "Sometimes I think it's the ghost of my grandmother, the spirit of my grandmother. She ..."
• "Sometimes I think that it's pure luck, I won the lottery. Sometimes I think it's ..."
• "Suddenly I'm hanging around with these people in this environment where I know nothing about ..."
• "Talk about pressure. Here was a little girl who didn't listen to her mother. According ..."
• "That crisis helped me to define what was important for me. It started off with ..."
• "That was a wonderful period in my life. I mean, I didn't become an artist, ..."
• "That was what achievement was: the plateaus you always had to maintain, the highest standards, ..."
• "That's what I think life is like, too. I have the luxury to do exactly ..."
• "The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading ..."
• "The hurdles and conflicts are really momentary. You get over them and you see what ..."
• "The new eyes can be very useful in breaking habits of relationships, the old irritations, ..."
• "The other books we had in the house, besides Bibles and medical textbooks of physical ..."
• "The question for me is, 'How am I affected by praise?' I am more fearful ..."
• "The strange thing is, if you ever have a chance to go back to the ..."
• "The success took me by surprise and it frightened me. On the day that there ..."
• "The year after my father and brother died, my mother took us to Europe. And ..."
• "There are a lot of people who think that's what's needed to be successful is ..."
• "There are so many things but the nice thing about being a writer is if ..."
• "There are so many things I would like to do. I would like to go ..."
• "There is one side of me that wanted to behave and to hear a voice ..."
• "There was no intention - unless there is something subconscious - in trying to depict ..."
• "There's a danger in balkanizing literature, as if it should be read as sociology, or ..."
• "They are not aversive in their actions and, yet they know how to ruffle the ..."
• "They can't change the fact that they made this really stupid mistake, so they are ..."
• "They didn't know who I really was. They didn't know how much the smallest amount ..."
• "They published my little essay and they gave me a transistor radio and, at that ..."
• "They were daughters, also wanting their mother's approval, and didn't understand why their mother was ..."
• "This invisible force that she taught me, this rebellion that I had. And then feeling ..."
• "This is the way it's always going to be. I'm never going to get along ..."
• "This was a moment when I thought for sure my life was over. I think ..."
• "Those are going to be important to the new kind of success. Success being defined ..."
• "To write the book, I had to put that aside. As with any book. I ..."
• "Ultimately, I have to write what I have to write about, including the question of ..."
• "We moved from 41st to 51st to 61st Street and Highland Avenue in Oakland. I ..."
• "We were seated in my parents' bedroom on my parents' bed. And this man, who ..."
• "Well suddenly they were shocked to find this mother saying, 'You didn't cook this long ..."
• "What amazed me was: I wrote about a girl who plays chess and her mother ..."
• "What better gift can I give my mother than to finally sit down and listen ..."
• "What comes to mind is what I think about with my nieces. They are very, ..."
• "What I fear most is taking the criticism too seriously, the negative criticism or the ..."
• "What you'll find ultimately is that this whole question of who you are is a ..."
• "When I look at external success and internal success, I always have to keep those ..."
• "When I was younger, I thought achievement had to do with gaining approval from other ..."
• "When it was discovered that I was reading this, my parents called in the family ..."
• "When people measure their lives in those terms, the passion is there, the self-guidance is ..."
• "When you read about the Civil War, a lot of people, like my husband, can ..."
• "Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from ..."
• "With that sendoff into the world, I was determined to make it as a writer. ..."
• "Words to me were magic. You could say a word and it could conjure up ..."
• "Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself ..."
• "You can get sucked into the idea that, 'Gosh, this is impressive. Maybe I should ..."
• "You don't say, 'Life's not fair, I worked hard for this. I deserve this.' Finding ..."
• "You enter into what one writer, Richard Ford, calls the 'period of existence.' That's when ..."
• "You get distracted. You get opportunities. If I look back ten years ago, fifteen years ..."
• "You know, when people say, 'How has success changed you?' you have to say, 'No. ..."
• "You write a book and you hope somebody will go out and pay $24.95 for ..."
• "You'll find out how many American assumptions you have and it will give you a ..."