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

“He’s funny and attractive. That doesn’t mean I want to sleep with him.” “That always means you want to sleep with someone.” “Thanks a lot,” I say. “Was that a thinly-veiled slut accusation?” “That’s funny, it wasn’t supposed to be thinly-veiled.”
― Sarah Lyons Fleming, quote from Mordacious

“Being in the present moment, one can step outside the mechanical train of life, and this is where the inner revolution begins.”
― Belsebuub, quote from Gazing into the Eternal: Reflections upon a Deeper Purpose to Living

“I was having nightmares because I’d discovered monsters that were real. Disease and the prospect of death were far scarier than any boogeyman.”
― Joelle Charbonneau, quote from Need

“The Tender Place

Your temples , where the hair crowded in ,
Were the tender place. Once to check
I dropped a file across the electrodes
of a twelve-volt battery -- it exploded
Like a grenade. Somebody wired you up.
Somebody pushed the lever. They crashed
The thunderbolt into your skull.
In their bleached coats, with blenched faces,
They hovered again
To see how you were, in your straps.
Whether your teeth were still whole .
The hand on the calibrated lever
Again feeling nothing
Except feeling nothing pushed to feel
Some squirm of sensation . Terror
Was the cloud of you
Waiting for these lightnings. I saw
An oak limb sheared at a bang.
You your Daddy's leg . How many seizures
Did you suffer this god to grab you
By the roots of the hair? The reports
Escaped back into clouds. What went up
Vaporized? Where lightning rods wept copper
And the nerve· threw off its skin
Like a burning child
Scampering out of the bomb-flash. They dropped you
A rigid bent bit of wire
Across the Boston City grid. The lights
In the Senate House dipped
As your voice dived inwards
Right through the bolt-hole basement.
Came up, years later,
Over-exposed, like an X-ray --
Brain-map still dark-patched
With the scorched-earth scars
Of your retreat . And your words ,
Faces reversed from the light ,
Holding in their entrails.”
― Ted Hughes, quote from Birthday Letters

“For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!”
― Herman Melville, quote from Moby-Dick

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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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.