Amy Tan Quotes

If you ask two people to remember a specific event, the stories are going to vary wildly because we always make ourselves out to be the hero.

One's memories aren't what actually happened - they're very subjective. You can always make it much better, right?

The way we remember people, even their beauty is all so subjective and a matter of perspective.

Every reminiscence is colored by the way things are today, and therefore by a delusive point of view.

Memory is not pure. Memories told are not pure memories; memories told are stories. The storyteller will change them. I've always been interested in that.

I'm so suspicious of our own understanding of the past. I just think that your mind plays absolute tricks on you and fools you every minute of every day. And so when you're talking about the past, you're talking about something that never happened. At least it didn't happen the way you think it happened.

How strange are the tricks of memory, which, often hazy as a dream about the most important events of a man's life, religiously preserve the merest trifles.

As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

Memory is a great artist. For every man and for every woman it makes the recollection of his or her life a work of art and an unfaithful record.

Memories are just stories we tell ourselves about our past; and that's often why they don't match when we've shared the same experiences with someone.

I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

We've outsourced our memories to digital devices, and the result is that we no longer trust our memories. We see every small forgotten thing as evidence that they're failing us.

I don't view my memory as accurate or static - and, in autobiographical fiction, my focus is still on creating an effect, not on documenting reality - so 'autobiographical,' to me, is closer in meaning to 'fiction' than 'autobiography.'

Memory is a fiction we tell ourselves: just a piece of the truth.

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events.

Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances

People usually tend to believe grim words rather than positive ones.

I found out I'd spent my whole life believing things that weren't necessarily accurate. My sisters' memories of certain events are entirely different from mine.

You can't trust your memory. You change it to suit yourself.

You'll remember every damn loss. But the wins? You don't necessarily remember.

I have never liked the memoir form because I tend to think that memory fictionalizes anyway. Once you claim that you are writing a narrative purely from memory, you are already in the realm of fiction.

One can never be sure whether a very early memory is a real memory or just the recollection of something which you were told happened.

Sometimes we talk about memory as though it's firm and fixed, but of course, memory is highly fluid and subjective and thus highly subject to manipulation.

A man's memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interest in the present.

What we remember is probably fiction anyway.