Amy Tan Quotes

Today, charting your own course isn't just more necessary than ever before. It's also much easier - and much more fun.

But once I acclimated and really used fame for what it was offering me as a tool to serve my life purpose of inspiring and contributing, then it started to get fun again.

Don't forget, you are the hero of your own story.

My job is to bring out in people what they wouldn't dare do themselves.

What I wanted to do and what I needed to do was something entirely different, and through reading Roussel I learned that I could do what I wanted all on my own and that I didn't have to rely on what had actually happened in my somewhat limited life and reading.

To me that's what Jobs was about. He said at the end of the movie, 'When you realize that the world was created by people no smarter than you, your life will change.' That, to me, is a message for right now and people figuring out what they're going to do with themselves.

The most creative act you will ever undertake is the act of creating yourself.

Others can inspire you, but ultimately the only thing that empowers you is what lies within you and learning how to better utilize what you’ve been given.

I think one day youll find that you're the hero you've been looking for.

What I wanted to hear didn't exist, so it was necessary for me to go out and create it.

One of the most important reasons for living is to do something - live outside of yourself and put together an idea, an idea that you want to explore and then complete... Awaken your creative sensitivities!

Education is the foundation for all we do in life, it shapes who we are and what we aspire to be. Creativity fuels innovation, and it's what all states should strive to instill in the next generations.

Every character is asking: 'What's my place? Why am I here? I don't want the answer to be 'Just because.' You find your own purpose. Each finds the reason to be here and how to contribute.

I don't want to be someone's reason to hate their life. I want to be someone's reason to seek something more in their life.

Sometimes you have to find the passion. It comes from the inside... Everyone has to find it for themselves.

I like to work on records when I feel inspired, not because it's expected of me.

What's interesting is with a lot of the work I do through my foundation, the 'Manifest Your Destiny' foundation, we really encourage people, and we attempt to empower, uplift and inspire people to live out their dreams, live out their destiny.

What people tell me they take away from my books is that they can shape their lives, they can achieve their own dreams. And certainly that's what I want them to take away.

The thing about performance, even if it's only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.

I think of myself as a catalyst of action and a messenger of hope, turning people onto themselves and turning people onto their dreams.

Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.

I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be what I want.

The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.

To exist is a habit I do not despair of acquiring.

While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness.