“Hardships can harden even the best person.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“To save myself, I destroyed another, and in doing so, I destroyed myself.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“I, not anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel if by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere—on water and land.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“Suffer more now, suffer less later.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“To keep false hopes is to prolong misery.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“The life we receive is not always what we choose.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“Fate changes when you change your clothes.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“Do you know what morals are Violet? They're other people's rules. Do you know what a conscience is? Freedom to use your own intelligence to determine what is right or wrong. You possess that freedom and no one can remove it from you”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“Teddy once told me that it's natural that we feel alone, and that's because our hearts are different from others and we don't even know how. When we're in love, as if by magic, our different hearts come together perfectly toward the same desire. Eventually, the differences return, and then comes heartache and mending, and, in between, much loneliness and fear. If love remains despite the pain of those differences, it must be guarded as rare...”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“...I owed her a debt of gratitude. More than gratitude, much more.
I could finally see what had always been there. She had been more than an attendant, more than a friend, more than a sister. She had been a mother to me. She had worried, sought to protect me from danger, guided me toward the best. She had looked out for my future, assessed the worthiness of everyone to be in my life. And in that way, she had taken me as her purpose in life, the one who gave her meaning. I had a constant love all along. And in recognizing that, I felt moved to tears.
"How could you step out of my life?" I told her. "if you do don't join me, I will be lost. No one would worry about me as much as you. No one knows me better, knows my past and what this new life means. I should have told you a long time ago." I became teary-eyed. She kept her lips sealed, but her jaw was trembling. "You are the only loyal person in my life, the only one I can trust."
Tears fell from her eyes. "Now you know. I was always the only one."
"We love each other," I said with a light laugh. "In spite of all the trouble I've given you, you stayed with me. So it must be that you loved me like a mother.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“Even when I worked in that world, I still wanted love so strong that the man would have no interest in another woman. Maybe you will always be incapable of giving that kind of love. You tell me I want too much. And maybe I do. But like you and your imagination, I can't help but be that way.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“Maybe the kind of love that would comfort me did not exist. Perhaps I expected too much of love and no one existed who could ever meet my unceasing and bottomless need for it.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“i'm not saying fate happens without blame. but when fate turns out well, everyone should forget the bad road that got us here.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“It was our fate and our natures, flawed and wounded, that brought us together - Violet Minturn”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“Accept love when it is offered, Violet. Return love and not suspicion. Then you'll receive more. - Loyalty Tang”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“Whenever others disapprove of you, you must disregard them and be the only”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“The best life you can have as you get into old age is good food, good teeth to eat it with, and few worries when you go to bed at night.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“Our love would be solace, companionship, and the mending of wounds.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“Where did he go when he left us? I spied the new journal he had started using just last week and held it against my chest. This was who he was. But it also was not. It was sad and beautiful knowledge that a person cannot be found elsewhere but in his own spirit. No one could possess it.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“Maybe all Americans who suffer from melancholy act as if they have gone mad. But I truly thought he might throw himself in the river, and I don't want his ghost visiting to keep telling me he's sorry.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“Why does love end so quickly and hatred last without end?”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“when fate turns out well, everyone should forget the bad road that got us here.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“Quiero que nuestro amor sea tan grande que nos duela por dentro”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“A moment is not the same as time.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“I hope you don’t suffer forever from keeping love from your heart”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“Our meeting each other could not possibly be as random as two leaves from two trees being blown together.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“Later they will remember those moments with you. But they are not memories of you, but the feeling they were immortal because you made them gods.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“Forget about love. You will receive that many times, but none of it is lasting.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
“Anyone can have original style,” he countered. “And yet no one truly does. We’re influenced by those who came before us, beginning with the painters thousands of years ago who imitated nature.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Valley of Amazement
Amy Tan
Born place: in Oakland, California, The United States
See more on GoodReads
“It was she made me acquainted with love. She went by the peaceful name of Ruth I think, but I can't say for certain. Perhaps the name was Edith. She had a hole between her legs, oh not the bunghole I had always imagined, but a slit, and in this I put, or rather she put, my so-called virile member, not without difficulty, and I toiled and moiled until I discharged or gave up trying or was begged by her to stop. A mug's game in my opinion and tiring on top of that, in the long run. But I lent myself to it with a good enough grace, knowing it was love, for she had told me so. She bent over the couch, because of her rheumatism, and in I went from behind. It was the only position she could bear, because of her lumbago. It seemed all right to me, for I had seen dogs, and I was astonished when she confided that you could go about it differently. I wonder what she meant exactly. Perhaps after all she put me in her rectum. A matter of complete indifference to me, I needn't tell you. But is it true love, in the rectum? That's what bothers me sometimes. Have I never known true love, after all? She too was an eminently flat woman and she moved with short stiff steps, leaning on an ebony stick. Perhaps she too was a man, yet another of them. But in that case surely our testicles would have collided, while we writhed. Perhaps she held hers tight in her hand, on purpose to avoid it. She favoured voluminous tempestuous shifts and petticoats and other undergarments whose names I forget. They welled up all frothing and swishing and then, congress achieved, broke over us in slow cascades. And all I could see was her taut yellow nape which every now and then I set my teeth in, forgetting I had none, such is the power of instinct. We met in a rubbish dump, unlike any other, and yet they are all alike, rubbish dumps. I don't know what she was doing there. I was limply poking about in the garbage saying probably, for at that age I must still have been capable of general ideas, This is life. She had no time to lose, I had nothing to lose, I would have made love with a goat, to know what love was. She had a dainty flat, no, not dainty, it made you want to lie down in a corner and never get up again. I liked it. It was full of dainty furniture, under our desperate strokes the couch moved forward on its castors, the whole place fell about our ears, it was pandemonium. Our commerce was not without tenderness, with trembling hands she cut my toe-nails and I rubbed her rump with winter cream. This idyll was of short duration. Poor Edith, I hastened her end perhaps. Anyway it was she who started it, in the rubbish dump, when she laid her hand upon my fly. More precisely, I was bent double over a heap of muck, in the hope of finding something to disgust me for ever with eating, when she, undertaking me from behind, thrust her stick between my legs and began to titillate my privates. She gave me money after each session, to me who would have consented to know love, and probe it to the bottom, without charge. But she was an idealist. I would have preferred it seems to me an orifice less arid and roomy, that would have given me a higher opinion of love it seems to me. However. Twixt finger and thumb tis heaven in comparison. But love is no doubt above such contingencies. And not when you are comfortable, but when your frantic member casts about for a rubbing-place, and the unction of a little mucous membrane, and meeting with none does not beat in retreat, but retains its tumefaction, it is then no doubt that true love comes to pass, and wings away, high above the tight fit and the loose.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable
“...for Christians typical dating can often be a swerver - an approach to relationships that wants to go in a different direction than the one God has for us.”
― Joshua Harris, quote from I Kissed Dating Goodbye: A New Attitude Toward Relationships and Romance
“Not that I've noticed." She looked down at my gun. "What a nice Glock. My sister carries a Glock, and she just loves it. I was thinking about trading in my .45, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. My dead husband gave it to me for our first anniversary. Rest his soul.”
― Janet Evanovich, quote from Hot Six
“Worry is fear in disguise. And fear will eat you from the inside out if you let it.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Captain's Fury
“Judith, do you take Ian for your husband?” She looked up at him before giving her answer. “We’ll see”
― Julie Garwood, quote from The Secret
Without You, There I...
I Love Dick
A Spool of Blue Thre...
Asylum
Evolve Your Brain: T...
EchoesBookQuoters 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.
