Quotes By Amy Tan

Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden.

You write a book and you hope somebody will go out and pay $24.95 for what you've just said. I think books were my salvation. Books saved me from being miserable.

There are a lot of people who think that's what's needed to be successful is always being right, always being careful, always picking the right path.

I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary; we did not have any books in the house.

I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.

I would still like to have that luxury, to be able to just sit and draw for hours and hours and hours. In a way, that's what I do as a writer.

That was a wonderful period in my life. I mean, I didn't become an artist, but somebody let me do something I loved. What a luxury, to do something you love to do.