Amy Tan Quotes About Daughters

Quotes about: Daughters

• 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

  Daughter, Mother, Fear

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club”, p.40, Penguin

• Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.

  Amy Tan

  Daughter, Laughing, Forever

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club”, p.213, Penguin

• I love my daughter. She and I have shared my 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.

  Amy Tan

  Daughter, Swimming, Mind

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club”, p.242, Penguin

• 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

  Mother, Daughter, Pain

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club”, p.252, Penguin

• 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

  Daughter, Eye, Swimming

• But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter. -Ying Ying

  Amy Tan

  Daughter, Mother, Winning

• Only two kinds of daughters, she shouted in Chinese. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!

  Amy Tan

  Daughter, Two, Chinese

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club”, p.142, Penguin

• I saw what I had been fighting for: It was for me, a scared child, who had run away a long time ago to what I had imagined was a safer place. And hiding in this place, behind my invisible barriers, I knew what lay on the other side: Her side attacks. Her secret weapons. Her uncanny ability to find my weakest spots. But in the brief instant that I had peered over the barriers I could finally see what was finally there: an old woman, a wok for her armor, a knitting needle for her sword, getting a little crabby as she waited patiently for her daughter to invite her in.

  Amy Tan

  Running, Daughter, Children

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club”, p.183, Penguin

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

  Amy Tan

  Mom, Daughter, Mother

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Kitchen God's Wife”, p.15, Penguin

• Yesterday my daughter said to me, 'My marriage is falling apart.' And now all she can do is watch it falling.

  Amy Tan

  Daughter, Fall, Yesterday

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club”, p.215, Penguin

• For all these years I kept my mouth closed so selfish desires would not fall out. And because I remained quiet for so long now my daughter does not hear me... All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. And because I moved so secretly now my daughter does not see me... We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing; unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.

  Amy Tan

  Running, Daughter, Selfish

• How I saw in her my own true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside my bones... Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain. This is how a daughter honors her mother. It is shou so deep it is in your bones. The pain of the flesh is nothing. The pain you must forget. 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 before her. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh.

  Amy Tan

  Daughter, Mother, Pain

• When my daughter looks at me, she sees a small old lady. That is because she sees only with her outside eyes. She has no chuming, no inside knowing of things. If she had chuming she would see a tiger lady. And she would have careful fear.

  Amy Tan

  Daughter, Eye, Knowing

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club: A Novel”, p.190, Penguin

• I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, to eat my own bitterness. And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.

  Amy Tan

  Girl, Daughter, Mother

  "Fictional character: An-Mei". "The Joy Luck Club", www.imdb.com. 1993.

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