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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.

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Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: as quoted in A Small Drop of Ink : A Collection of Inspirational and Moving Quotations of the Ages (2003) by Linda Pendleton, p. 129
Source quality: Secondhand citation Quoted from another book or article rather than from the original.

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My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes.

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I have always known a thing before it happens.

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Why are you attracted only to Chinese nonsense?

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It is because I had so much joy that I came to have so much hate.

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Yin people is the term Kwan uses, because "ghosts" is politically incorrect.

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I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control.

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Now that I'm angry at Harold, it's hard to remember what was so remarkable about him.

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Topics

Inspirational

More quotes by Amy Tan

"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.

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

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I began to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid.

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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?

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They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort.

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I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Amy Tan (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.