29 quotes
"You see what power is — holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them! Besides, maybe it is true. Maybe Peanut and Little Yu's mother are now big Communists, who knows?"
The Kitchen God's Wife (1991)
For woman is yin, the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.
The Joy Luck Club (1989)
Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.
The Kitchen God's Wife (1991)
I began to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid.
The Joy Luck Club (1989)
Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.
Everyone must dream. We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming — well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate. Isn’t that true?
The Hundred Secret Senses (1995)
My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes.
The Hundred Secret Senses (1995)
I have always known a thing before it happens.
The Joy Luck Club (1989)
Why are you attracted only to Chinese nonsense?
The Joy Luck Club (1989)
It is because I had so much joy that I came to have so much hate.
The Joy Luck Club (1989)
Yin people is the term Kwan uses, because "ghosts" is politically incorrect.
SALON Interview (1995)
Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies.
The Joy Luck Club (1989)
I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control.
The Joy Luck Club (1989)
Now that I'm angry at Harold, it's hard to remember what was so remarkable about him.
The Joy Luck Club (1989)
I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?
The Joy Luck Club (1989)
Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.
The Joy Luck Club (1989)
Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine.
The Joy Luck Club (1989)
Look at this face. Do you see my foolish hope?
The Joy Luck Club (1989)
Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.
The Joy Luck Club (1989)
I had new thoughts, willful thoughts, or rather thoughts filled with lots of won'ts. I won't let her change me, I promised myself. I won't be what I'm not.
The Joy Luck Club (1989)