Amy Tan Quotes About Mothers

Quotes about: Mothers

• I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength..."strongest wind cannot be seen."

  Amy Tan

  Strength, Mother, Art

• And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation.

  Amy Tan

  Daughter, Mother, Fear

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club”, p.40, Penguin

• Clichés are static, the emotion behind them long spent. If you are tempted to use them, here is a saying of my mother’s: Fang pi bu-cho, cho pi bu-fang. Basically that translates to: "Loud farts don’t stink, and the really smelly ones don’t make a sound." In other words: When you’re full of beans, you just blow a lot of hot air. If you want to have a real impact, be deadly but silent. Oh, also recognize the difference between a bad cliché and a good quotation. My mother’s saying is a good quotation. You should use it often.

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Real, Blow

• Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother's English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It's my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Chinese, World

• Mothers have the huge influence, and I feel like they're always teaching us from the day we're born what to be afraid of, what to be cautious of, what we should like and what we should look like. Then we spend half of our life trying to be not like them, and then we reach another part of our lives where we see these things we can't get rid of.

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Teaching, Trying

  Source: www.pbs.org

• A mother is always the beggining. She is how things begin.

  Amy Tan

  Mother

• People think it's a terrible tragedy when somebody has Alzheimer's. But in my mother's case, it's different. My mother has been unhappy all her life. For the first time in her life, she's happy.

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Thinking, Alzheimer's

• So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. the pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and giver her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Daughter, Pain

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club”, p.252, Penguin

• Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh. -An-mei

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Skins, Flesh

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club”, p.48, Penguin

• Each person is made of five different elements, she told me. Too much fire and you had a bad temper. That was like my father, whom my mother always critized for his cigarette habit and who always shouted back that she should feel guilty that he didn't let my mother speak her mind. Too little wood and you bent too quickly to listen to other people's ideas, unable to stand on your own. This was like my Auntie An-mei. Too much water and you flowed in too many different directions. like myself.

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Father, Ideas

• A girl is like a young tree, she said. You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight. But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first strong wind. And then you will be like a weed, growing wild in any direction, running along the ground until someone pulls you out and throws you away.

  Amy Tan

  Girl, Mother, Running

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club”, p.191, Penguin

• For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Believe, Joy Luck Club

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club”, p.142, Penguin

• But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter. -Ying Ying

  Amy Tan

  Daughter, Mother, Winning

• Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.

  Amy Tan

  Mom, Daughter, Mother

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Kitchen God's Wife”, p.15, Penguin

• I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect for others, and eventually, thought neither of us knew it at the time, chess games... "Come from the South, blow from the wind - poom! - North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen."

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Art, Blow

  "The Joy Luck Club". Book by Amy Tan, 1989.

• Even if I had expected it, even if I had known what I was going to do with my life, it would have knocked the wind out of me. When something that violent hits you, you can't help but lose your balance and fall. And after you pick yourself up, you realize you can't trust anybody to save you- not your husband, not your mother, not God. So what can you do to stop yourself from tilting and falling all over again?

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Husband, Fall

• My sisters and I stand, arms around each other, laughind and wiping the tears from each others eyes. The flash of the Polaroid goes off and my family hands me the snapshot. My sisters and I watch quietly together, eager to see what develops. Ghe grey-greensurface changes to the bright colors of our three images, sharpening and deepening all at once. And although we don't speak, I know we all see it: Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in suprise to see, her long-cherished wish.

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Eye, Hands

• I had always assumed we had an unspoken understanding about these things: that she didn't really mean I was a failure, and I really meant I would try to respect her opinions more. But listening to Auntie Lin tonight reminds me once agian: My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other's meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more. No doubt she told Auntie Lin I was going back to school to get a doctorate.

  Amy Tan

  Mother, School, Mean

• I take a few quick sips. "This is really good." And I mean it. I have never tasted tea like this. It is smooth, pungent, and instantly addicting. "This is from Grand Auntie," my mother explains. "She told me 'If I buy the cheap tea, then I am saying that my whole life has not been worth something better.' A few years ago she bought it for herself. One hundred dollars a pound." "You're kidding." I take another sip. It tastes even better.

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Mean, Years

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Kitchen God's Wife”, p.45, Penguin

• How I saw in her my own true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside my bones... Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain. This is how a daughter honors her mother. It is shou so deep it is in your bones. The pain of the flesh is nothing. The pain you must forget. Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother before her. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh.

  Amy Tan

  Daughter, Mother, Pain

• I saw my mother in a different light. We all need to do that. You have to be displaced from what's comfortable and routine, and then you get to see things with fresh eyes, with new eyes.

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Eye, Light

  "Author of The Joy Luck Club". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 28, 1996.

• I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn't understand her English, because she was Chinese.

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Thinking, People

  "Author of The Joy Luck Club". The Academy of Achievement, www.achievement.org. June 28, 1996.

• I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, to eat my own bitterness. And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.

  Amy Tan

  Girl, Daughter, Mother

  "Fictional character: An-Mei". "The Joy Luck Club", www.imdb.com. 1993.

• She [my mother] said that if I listened to her, later I would know what she knew: where true words came from, always from up high, above everything else. And if I didn't listen to her, she said my ear would bend too easily to other people, all saying words that had no lasting meaning, because they came from the bottom of their hearts, where their own desires lived, a place where I could not belong.

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Heart, People

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club”, p.185, Penguin

• My mother didn't teach me lessons about being Chinese as strongly as she did the notion of who I was as a female.

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Chinese, Female

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