Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.
– Amy Tan
Memory feeds imagination.
– Amy Tan
You see what power is - holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them!
– Amy Tan
Words to me were magic. You could say a word and it could conjure up all kinds of images or feelings or a chilly sensation or whatever. It was amazing to me that words had this power.
– Amy Tan
It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success.
– Amy Tan
I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.
– Amy Tan
I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.
– Amy Tan
I think I've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success.
– Amy Tan
I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and, in that respect, I liked Bible stories, because to me they were very gothic.