Amy Tan Quotes

To be different is not necessarily to be ugly; to have a different idea is not necessarily to be wrong. The worst possible thing is for all of us to begin to look and talk and act and think alike.

Prints mimic what we are as humans: we are all the same and yet every one is different. I think there's a spiritual power in repetition, a devotional quality, like saying rosaries.

Was everyone else really as alive as she was?...If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone's thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone's claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was.

I think people dream in their own way, dreams are extremely personal, even from person to person. They are completely individual.

I think a lot of ladies found me so attractive because I was different, and I acted on that in a way.

According to one influential wing of modern secular society there are few more disreputable fates than to end up being 'like everyone else' for 'everyone else' is a category that comprises the mediocre and the conformist, the boring and the suburban. The goal of all right-thinking people should be to mark themselves off from the crowd and 'stand out' in whatever way their talents allow.

I'm sure people would argue this, but I want to be different in everything I do. I don't think I've been the same in anything I've done, and I want to keep that up.

I don't think it's the most important thing in life to fit it. I think it's the most important thing in life to dance to the beat of your own drum and to look like you're having more fun than the people who look cool like they fit in.

As for me, the only stuff I've ever had success with is when I'm trying to be completely original and not thinking about mirroring what else is out there.

There's a right way of doing things and a wrong way. If you've made up your mind to be different from everybody else, I don't suppose I can stop you, but I really don't think it's very considerate.

The thing that you think is imperfect about you, is the thing that makes you who you are. It separates you from everybody else.

I suppose I've always been attracted to this sort of outsider in general - in literature, in music, politics, whatever - and to the person that is able to be relentlessly themselves. I don't think that I have that quality, that strength of mind.

I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people. Maybe that is what makes people "participate.

I think that there's a natural attraction to enigmatic characters, people that have decided to make a decision in their lives to live differently than everyone else. That's a very attractive quality that also happens to be good for filmmaking, people that have their own point of view and aren't looking at things the same way as everyone else.

Write what makes you laugh not what you think will make someone else laugh.

I can't think of any better representation of beauty than someone who is unafraid to be herself.

I think they were scared of me because I was different. I've always asked, 'Why? Why do I have to do that? Why do I have to look this way? Why do I have to dress this way? Why do I have to behave this way?'

All day long the thoughts that occupy your mind, your Secret Place, as Jesus calls it, are moulding your destiny for good or evil; in fact, the truth is that the whole of our life’s experience is but the outer expression of inner thought. Now we can choose the sort of thoughts that we entertain. It will be a little difficult to break a bad habit of thought, but it can be done. We can choose how we shall think—in point of fact, we always do choose—and therefore our lives are just the result of the kind of thoughts we have

I just try to be myself and not conform to something I'm not and just continue doing what I do. I just try not to think about the fact that I'm an inspiration for people.

I think it's important to say something. If you're making music it's kinda' like, oh, cool, so is everyone else.

I've always been very independent. Even in relationships, I'm focused on the quality of my life and not enmeshing myself so much with somebody else's experience. But I think there's incredible value in being married.

Let people go on talking as they like, and we will go on living as we think best.

I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.

Don't be imitators. The mind is an imitator, because it is easier to play the game of imitation than to become authentically true. Many ideas have been given to you: become like a Buddha, become like Jesus. become like Krishna - as if you have to become everybody else EXCEPT yourself. As if God is only against you. He's for Krishna, for Christ, for Mahavir, for Buddha - only against you. Then why does He create you? Then He seems simply foolish. Why does He go on creating you? If He's interested in Buddha, Hc can create Buddhas. Why you?

Her face ... was a one-of-a-kind, a surprising variation on a familiar theme - a variation that made observers think, Yes - that would be another very nice way for people to look. What Beatrice had done with her face, actually, was what any plain girl could do. She overlaid it with dignity, suffering, intelligence, and a piquant dash of bitchiness.