Amy Tan Quotes

I'm from a family of teachers. My father would drown me in the bathtub if my daughter didn't graduate from college. I don't care who she is or what she does. Just get the diploma.

When I was in college, I spent a summer working in London. I'd enjoyed tea before that, but then I got actual, really good tea there and never looked back.

My grandmother was a very charitable woman, and my mother grew up that way.

I won't do a role which children in my family cannot look up to.

As parents, we should remember that our lives may be the book from the family library which the children most treasure. Are our examples worthy of emulation? Do we live in such a way that a son or a daughter may say, ‘I want to follow my dad,’ or ‘I want to be like my mother’? Unlike the book on the library shelf, the covers of which shield its contents, our lives cannot be closed. Parents, we truly are an open book in the library of learning of our homes.

For a moment, I was captivated as I studied them side by side. My mother: the perfect picture of guardian excellence and decorum. My father: always capable of achieving his goals, no matter how twisted the means. Uneasily, I began to understand how I’d inherited my bizarre personality.

I respect Donald Trump's children. His children are incredibly able and devoted, and I think that says a lot about Donald. I don't agree with nearly anything else he says or does, but I do respect that. And I think that is something that as a mother and a grandmother is very important to me.

Nostalgia is partly illusion in that we remember things differently as we get older, etc. But that doesn't mean, when historians look back on the 1950s, say, from the year 2090, it won't be judged as a saner, slower, less narcissistic, more family-focused, and economically secure time.

The greatest finish line for me was finishing college - it was a pact I made with my mother, during a time when she fell ill. That happened during my Freshman year, and unfortunately she never saw me compete in the Olympics. But she really wanted me to finish college, because she never finished Junior High.

I hoped that Grace would be a little bit of the best of all of us: Scarlett's spirit, and my mother's strength, Marion's determination, and Michael's sly humor. I wasn't sure what I could give, not just yet. But I would know when I told her about the comet, years from now, I would know. And I would lean close to her ear, saying the words no one else could hear, explaining it all. The language of solace and comets, and the girls we all become, in the end.

My mother - my stepmother, really, she herself have been what they call an elocutionist. And she was the one who first encouraged me to write poetry, because she used to read it to us. And then when I began to write when I was nine years old, my first poem was published in the Amsterdam News. I called it "The Graveyard."

My parents gave me that gift of "reading is a good thing." I mean my mother was afraid of everything. But she was never afraid that Judy is reading.

So mothers everywhere take heart. The indoctrination you administer now may have unanticipated positive effects years later.

In my private circle I am a mother, grandmother, wife, friend, daughter... the success means nothing to my small tribe.

I have no doubt that over the years my children will find plenty of things about me to criticize. But something tells me that twenty years from now not one of them will sit on some therapist's couch complaining because their mother didn't spend enough time vacuuming up glitter.

I would much rather be known as the mother of a great son than the author of a great book or the painter of a great masterpiece.

All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes.

My mother had handed down respect for the possibilities...and the will to grasp them.

I'll impose upon you the same arrogance that was imposed on me, and on my mother, my grandmother, my grandmother's mother: all the way back to the first human born of another human being, whether he liked it or not. Probably, if he or she had been allowed to choose, he would have been frightened and answered: No, I don't want to be born. But no one asked their opinion, and so they were born and lived and died after giving birth to another human being who was not asked to choose, and that one did likewise, for millions of years, right down to us.

I think it must somewhere be written that the virtues of mothers shall be visited on their children, as well as the sins of their fathers.

If I had to give advice about parents, it would be this: Value your relationships with them. Those relationships are what you stand for. Not only are we blessed to wear a uniform that says PHILLIES on the front, but we have our names on the back. That name means you're playing for your family.

I embrace the criticism, because ultimately (it means) the masses have seen it [my movie]. I embrace it for my father's story, for my mother's story, for my auntie, for my grandmother, who all got their teeth knocked out so I could be [where I am].

It also comes down to parenting. It is important to know what your beliefs are, and that you have to stand up for them or you don't really believe in them. You know, my father and mother - in fact, every member of my immediate family - have worked for the federal government. Sometimes misunderstood is that I didn't stand up to overthrow the system.

I mean, what is an un-birthday present?" A present given when it isn't your birthday, of course." Alice considered a little. "I like birthday presents best," she said at last. You don't know what you're talking about!" cried Humpty Dumpty. "How many days are there in a year?" Three hundred and sixty-five," said Alice. And how many birthdays have you?" One.