Amy Tan Quotes

Don't you ever imagine things differently than what they are? Oh, Marilla, how much you miss.

Some of these days, Oh, you'll miss me honey

A woman often thinks she regrets the lover, when she only regrets the love.

My dad had a lot of bad luck. You could see his suffering, his terrible suffering, living a life that was disappointing and looking for another one.

People never know what they want, though everyone says they do. If they did, nobody would ever be surprised.

If men could regard the events of their own lives with more open minds, they would frequently discover that they did not really desire the things they failed to obtain.

That's the trouble with wishing you were somebody else. As much as you may want it, you know it'll never happen, at least not in this lifetime.

I think, for the majority of my twenties, I was always so concerned with what I didn't have, or what I still wanted.

What you've never had, you never miss.

I lay around and wonder why you were always there for me.

There is always something missing that torments me.

I'm so tired of missing things I don't have.

There's no ifs and buts or maybes, you're gonna miss, you're gonna miss my loving.

When you get to be my age there are more and more people you have known that you miss. Brion [Gysin], Antony Balch, Ian Summerville are ones I think of right away I was quite close to.

What you really value is what you miss, not what you have.

This is a difference between us: you desire what other people have, while I desire the things I used to have, or think I might have one day.

I don't think your missing pieces ever fit inside you again once they go missing.

Here are the things I know for sure: When you think you're right, you are most likely wrong. Things that break - be they bones, hearts, or promises - can be put back together but will never really be whole. And, in spite of what I said, you can miss a person you've never known. I learn this over and over again.

I weaned myself on the nostalgia equivalent of methadone (less addictive, less obvious, less likely to make you crazy): missing what I had never had.

The more desires you have, the more misery you will create for yourself. Misery is a consequence of desiring - and you go on desiring. In fact, you think that if your desires are fulfilled your miseries will disappear. In the first place they are never fulfilled; in the second place, if they are fulfilled, nothing is fulfilled by their fulfillment. You remain as empty as you have always been - or even more, because up to now you were occupied with a certain desire; now even that is fulfilled. A deep deep emptiness comes to you.

Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder; she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate.

Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.

That is the worst moment, when you feel you have lost / The desires for all that was most desirable, / Before you are contented with what you can desire; / Before you know what is left to be desired; / And you go on wishing that you could desire / What desire has left behind.

Not everything you wanted, deep inside, worked out.

Father's Day makes me wish I could talk to my Dad just one more time, instead of all the time.