Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Amy Tan

Quote by Amy Tan

“Life was good until the purges came. After that, there was nothing to do except flee into the jungle, high up, where it was so thick only wild things grew. When the purges stopped Black Spot and his friends and cousin went quietly to the town of Nyang Shwe, where they were not known. They procured black-market identity cards of dead people with good reputations. After that they lived two ways: in the open life of the dead, and in the hidden life of the living.”

Quote by Amy Tan

Book:Saving Fish From Drowning
Create image

Work

Saving Fish From Drowning

In this novel, a diverse group of individuals embark on a trip to a remote island, each seeking personal salvation. The narrative intertwines their individual stories, revealing their struggles with self-discovery and the search for meaning. more

Author

Amy Tan
Amy Tan

Amy Tan, born in February 19, 1952, is a renowned film writer from the United States. Her works are characterized by profound character portrayal and unique cultural background, with notable works including 'The Joy Luck Club'. more

You May Also Like

“The ambition was neither to know the Sino-Burmese as a totalizable phenomenon nor to produce uncontestable knowledge. As Hannah Arendt has stated, this pursuit of understanding is an unending activity that attempts to activate the multiple meanings of things and these meanings are the unfolding of significance.”

MyanmarYangon
Book:Mapping Chinese Rangoon: Place and Nation among the Sino-Burmese
Create image

“Many writing texts caution against asking friends to read your stuff, suggesting you're not apt to get a very unbiased opinion[.] ... It's unfair, according to this view, to put a pal in such a position. What happens if he/she feels he/she has to say, "I'm sorry, good buddy, you've written some great yarns in the past but this one sucks like a vacuum cleaner"? The idea has some validity, but I don't think an unbiased opinion is exactly what I'm looking for. And I believe that most people smart enough to read a novel are also tactful enough to find a gentler mode of expression than "This sucks." (Although most of us know that "I think this has a few problems" actually means "This sucks," don't we?)”

Writing
Book:On writing: a memoir of the craft
Create image

“အခုဆိုရင် ဂျာနယ်တွေ ၃၀၀ လောက်ရှိနေပြီ။ အများစုက စီးပွားရေး၊ ကျန်းမာရေးပဲ။ အတွေးအခေါ်ပါတာ မများဘူး။ သဘောထားအမြင် ဖော်ပြတာနည်းတယ်။ မြန်မာပြည်မျာ စိစစ်ရေးမရှိတော့ဘူးဆိုပေမယ့် အစစ်အမှန်လွတ်လပ်မှု မရှိသေးဘူး။ အချက်အလက်တွေ တင်ပြတာမျိုးပဲ ရှိသေးတယ်။ ဒါက အစိုးရကြောင့်မဟုတ်၊ စာရေးသူတွေကိုယ်တိုင် ဦးနှောက်ထဲမှာ ထိန်းချုပ်မှုတွေ ဝေဝဲနေဆဲမို့ပါပဲ။”

CensorshipMyanmarMyanmar Literature
Book:Saffron Shadows and Salvaged Scripts: Literary Life in Myanmar Under Censorship and in Transition
Create image

“A whole society composed of the unknown within them! They all sense that the rules they live by are no longer valid, that they live according to archaic laws--neither their religion nor their morality is in any way suited to the needs of the present. For a 100 years or more Europe has done nothing but study and build factories. They know exactly how many ounces of powder to kill a man but they don't know how to pray to God, they don't even know how to be happy for a single contented hour.”

Hesse Demian Europe Happiness
Book:Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
Create image

“And at last, the dearest, most improbable sound of all— the sound of a green trolley car going around a comer— a trolley burdened with brown and alien and beautiful people, and the sound of other people running and calling out with triumph as they leaped up and swung aboard and vanished around a corner on the shrieking rails and were borne away in the sun-blazed distance to leave only the sound of tortillas frying on the market stoves, or was it merely the ever rising and falling hum and burn of static quivering along two thousand miles of copper wire . . .”

TravelForeignTrolley
Book:Dandelion Wine
Create image

“They sat eating ham sandwiches and fresh strawberries and waxy oranges and Mr. Tridden told them how it had been twenty years ago, the band playing on that ornate stand at night, the men pumping air into their brass horns, the plump conductor flinging perspiration from his baton, the children and fireflies running in the deep grass, the ladies with long dresses and high pompadours treading the wooden xylophone walks with men in choking collars. There was the walk now, all softened into a fiber mush by the years. The lake was silent and blue and serene, and fish peacefully threaded the bright reeds, and the motorman murmured on and on, and the children felt it was some other year, with Mr. Tridden looking wonderfully young, his eyes lighted like small bulbs, blue and electric. It was a drifting, easy day, nobody rushing, and the forest all about, the sun held in one position, as Mr. Tridden's voice rose and fell, and a darning needle sewed along the air, stitching, restitching designs both golden and invisible. A bee settled into a flower, humming and humming. The trolley stood like an enchanted calliope, simmering where the sun fell on it. The trolley was on their hands, a brass smell, as they ate ripe cherries. The bright odor of the trolley blew from their clothes on the summer wind.”

Nineteenth CenturyNatures BeautyTrolleyMusic Band
Book:Dandelion Wine
Create image

“Perhaps the agnostic even prefers signs to reality. Perhaps he prefers this undecidable situation, since you can play with these floating signs and that is not possible with so-called 'objective' reality. The move from the real to the sign opens up an enormous field of play and uncertainty. Particularly where the reality of power is concerned. For if there is, indeed,a risk of anaesthesia and manipulation by signs and images that is to power's advantage, there is the risk that power itself may find itself reduced merely to the signs of power. This profusion of signs and of what is manifested does, moreover, effect a profound change in the symbolic relation to power. That relation is based on the unilateral gift (of laws, institutions, work, security, etc.). It is not so much by violence and constraint, but only by this symbolic obligation that power exists. Now, from the point when all that it gives us is signs, our debt to it is infinitely less great. With power distributing nothing but signs to us, we merely give back signs in return, and our servitude is the lighter for it. Admittedly, the enjoyment of immaterial goods is not so great, but this also means we owe little in return and we respond to the airiness of signs with an equal indifference. We can deny power and set it aside by mere incredulity, simply responding to the signs of power with the signs of servitude. This is perhaps what is meant by 'weak thought' (pensiero debole). With Virtual Reality, this process of disinvestment becomes even more radical, and we enter upon a phase of unbinding [deliaison], of quasi-total disobligation.”

SimulationTranspolitics
Book:The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact
Create image