Quotes from The Joy Luck Club

“Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“Now you see,' said the turtle, drifting back into the pond, 'why it is useless to cry. Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else's joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable.
-Suyuan”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“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, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind.
-Lindo”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“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, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over.
-Rose”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better.
-Jing-mei”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“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, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“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, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying.
-An-mei”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“I won't be what I'm not.
-Jing-mei”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“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, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“Your life is what you see in front of you.
-An-mei”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me. ”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“ wisdom is like a bottomless pond. You throw stones in and they sink into darkness and dissolve. Her eyes looking back do not reflect anything.
I think this to myself even though I love my daughter. She and I have shared the same body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me.
-Ying Ying”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever.
-An-mei”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“Too many good things all seem the same after a while. ”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“To come so far, to lose so much and to find nothing.
-Jing-mei”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“I think now that fate is half shaped by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. You have to pay attention to what you lost. You have to undo the expectation.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“But now that I am old, moving every year closer to the end of my life, I also feel closer to the beginning. And I remember everything that happened that day becasue it has happened many times in my life. The same innocence, trust, and restlessness; the wonder, fear, and lonliness. How I lost myself.
I remember all these things. And tonight, on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, I also remember what I asked the Moon Lady so long ago. I wished to be found.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“There's no hope. There's no reason to keep trying.
Because you must. This is not hope. Not reason. This is your fate. This is your life, what you must do.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“When you lose your face..., it is like dropping your necklace down a well. The only way you can get it back is to fall in after it.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“But I was no longer sacared. I could see what was inside me.
-Lindo”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

“If I look upon my whole life, I cannot think of another time when I felt more comfortable: when I had no worries, fears, or desires, when my life seemed as soft and lovely as lying inside a cocoon of rose silk.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club

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Popular quotes

“The stacks of pav have been sprinkled with chutney—
the top half of the inside of the bun is bathed in green chutney, the bottom with red garlic chutney—
and the assistant reaches out with one hand, in one continuous arc of his arm opening the pav, scooping up two of the vadas, one in each nest of pav, and delivering it to the hungry customer. I walk away from the stall and crush the vada by pressing down on it with the pav; little cracks appear in the crispy surface, and the vada oozes out its potato-and-pea mixture. I eat. The crispy batter, the mouthful of sweet-soft pav tempering the heat of the chutney, the spices of the vada mixture —dark with garam masala and studded with whole cloves of garlic that look like cashews—get masticated into a good mouthful, a good mouth-feel. My stomach is getting filled, and I feel I am eating something nourishing after a long spell of sobbing. Borkar has done his dharma.”
― Suketu Mehta, quote from Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found

“The pain comes from more than the facts of circumstance, or the deeds of others. It comes from within. From understanding what we lost. It comes from knowing how foolish we were - vain, arrogant children - when we thought ourselves happy. It comes from knowing how fragile and doomed the old ways were, just when we thought them and ourselves, secure!. The pain comes from knowing we have never been safe, and therefore will never be safe again. It comes from knowing we can never be children again. ”
― John Jakes, quote from Heaven and Hell

“And at one point (cough) walking into a chicks knife (cough), he'd finally won.
'I'm king of the world, bitches. Come in here and bask in my glory.' His voice echoed through the foyer, expectant eager.
-Strider”
― Gena Showalter, quote from The Darkest Secret

“You were patient all this time. I had to find myself first; I had to remember who I was and become the person I was meant to be. You have been there for me patiently while I searched for you, even when I didn't know I was looking for you, you were there.”
― Rachel Higginson, quote from Fearless Magic

“I'll never understand how a man can live his life
With his finger on the self-destruct button,
Holding it there day after day,
Blinded by an obsession to press it
But lacking the conviction to do even that.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Bruiser

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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