Amy Tan Quotes

I'd learned a lot in the Army. I knew that above all things in the world I had to become so big, so strong that people and their hatred could never touch me.

I faced a certain amount of violence. It taught me that I had to learn to protect myself - and it made me stronger. It could have made me step backwards with my self-discovery. Instead, it pushed me further.

Claim your space. Draw a circle of light around it. Push back against the dark. Don't just survive. Celebrate.

Money doesn't bring courage, I learned. It's the other way around. Once I took that lesson to heart, I began to rebuild my life.

It's okay not to be okay... Sometimes it's hard, to follow your heart but tears don't mean you're losing, everybody's bruising, there's nothing wrong with who you are.

It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.\

No matter where we live on the planet or how difficult our situation seems to be, we have the ability to overcome and transcend our circumstances.

And if my heart be scarred and burned, The safer, I, for all I learned.

Basically, what you find out is the limits of your patience and your strength and your capacity to adapt. You find that out in travel and being alone and being tested. So that's a great thing.

Sometimes our strengths are also our weaknesses. Sometimes to be strong you have to first be weak. You have to share your burdens; you have to lean on other people while you face your problems and yourself.

If you can't go back to your mother's womb, you'd better learn to be a good fighter.

When I planted my pain in the field of patience it bore fruit of happiness.

From bitter searching of the heart, quickened with passion and with pain we rise to play a greater part this is the faith from which we start.

Life. Unfair and painful at times. But always moving forward, always shifting,changing, with times relentless passage smoothing down jagged parts until it no longer hurts quite so much to breathe.

I grew to see my affliction as my gift. When I sang, I soared. I could soar higher than all those hurts aimed at my heart. All I needed was the courage to be me.

I wish I'd known from the beginning that I was born a strong woman. What a difference it would have made! I wish I'd known that I was born a courageous woman; I've spent so much of my life cowering. How many conversations would I not only have started but finished if I had known I possessed a warrior's heart? I wish I'd known that I'd be born to take on the world; I wouldn't have run from it for so long, but run to it with open arms.

Though at this moment she felt abused, abandoned, and ashamed of herself, Madeleine knew that she was still young, that she had her whole life ahead of her--a life in which, if she persevered, she might do something special--and that part of persevering meant getting past moments just like this one, when people made you feel small, unlovable, and took away your confidence.

Nobody can ever be fully prepared to deal with a new, painful situation. Sometimes I react with patience and sometimes I react by doing something impulsive. But I always learn from such experiences.

Each of us is the sum of our scars.

We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of it, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.

It will feel impossible; like you are dying inside this is your soul crying out for life. It may take everything you have; every ounce of will and strength. You will lose a part of yourself trying to save something essential and innocent. And when you have given everything, you will recover and you will be set free, and you will discover there was even more in you than you ever knew.

Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.

You have incredible lives ahead of you. You have incredible things that you can accomplish. If you feel that, you will have an amazing life. Do not let anything build a wall too high for you to get over. And I know that might seem very cliche, but I've had alot of friends who had hurt themselves. And when you're younger, a lot of that stuff is so temporary. You can get through it. You're stronger than you think. You'll ALWAYS be stronger than you think. Feel with your heart and do what you want.

Vulnerability pushed, I pushed back. I lost the fight, but probably won my life back.