Amy Tan - The Kitchen God's Wife (1991)

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

Amy Tan
Isn't that how it is when you must decide with your heart? You are not just choosing one thing over another. You are choosing what you want. And you are also choosing what somebody else does not want, and all the consequences that follow. You can tell yourself, That's not my problem, but those words do not wash the trouble away. Maybe it is no longer a problem in your life. But it is always a problem in your heart.

Amy Tan
How can you say luck and chance are the same thing? Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterwards.

Amy Tan
And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.

Amy Tan
How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently?

Amy Tan
Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.

Amy Tan
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
Her mouth dropped open to let this thought come in and nourish her brain.

Amy Tan
That is the saddest part when you lose someone you love - that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost? Maybe you lost more maybe less, then thousand different things that come from your memory or imagination - and you do not know which is which, which was true, which is false.

Amy Tan
Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it - that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.

Amy Tan
When I returned home that day, I saw my life as if I already knew the happy ending of a story. I looked around the house and thought, soon I will no longer have to see these walls and all the unhappiness they keep inside.

Amy Tan
You see what power is – holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them.

Amy Tan
Whenever my mother talks to me, she begins the conversation as if we were already in the middle of an argument.

Amy Tan