Best Quotes from The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan with Page Numbers

this bird, boasted the market vendor, was once a duck that stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goose, and now look!—it is too beautiful to eat.

In America I will have a daughter just like me.

But over there nobody will say her worth is measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch.

Over there nobody will look down on her, because I will make her speak only perfect American English.

And over there she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow!

She will know my meaning, because I will give her this swan—a creature that became more than what was hoped for.

the immigration officials pulled her swan away from her, leaving the woman fluttering her arms and with only one swan feather for a memory.

And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind.

This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions.

And she waited, year after year, for the day she could tell her daughter this in perfect American English.

"Joy Luck was an idea my mother remembered from the days of her first marriage in Kweilin, before the Japanese came."

"Hope was our only joy. And that’s how we came to call our little parties Joy Luck."

"To despair was to wish back for something already lost."

"I thought up Joy Luck on a summer night that was so hot... I knew I needed something to do to help me move."

"What was worse, we asked among ourselves, to sit and wait for our own deaths with proper somber faces? Or to choose our own happiness?"

"Even toilet paper was worth more. And that made us laugh harder, to think a thousand-yuan note wasn’t even good enough to rub on our bottoms."

"Your mother was a very strong woman, a good mother. She loved you very much, more than her own life."

"Your mother is in your bones!"

"Tell them stories she told you, lessons she taught, what you know about her mind that has become your mind."

"I will remember everything about her and tell them," I say more firmly. And gradually, one by one, they smile and pat my hand.

"When you lose your face, An-mei, it is like dropping your necklace down a well. The only way you can get it back is to fall in after it."

"If you are greedy, what is inside you is what makes you always hungry."

"Your own thoughts are so busy swimming inside that everything else gets pushed out."

"I felt our house was so unhappy, but my little brother did not seem to think so."

"Even your mother has used up her tears and left. If you do not get well soon, she will forget you."

"I worshipped this mother from my dream. But the woman standing by Popo’s bed was not the mother of my memory. Yet I came to love this mother as well."

"How I saw in her my own true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside my 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."

"This is how a daughter honors her mother. It is shou so deep it 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."

I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents’ promise.

Feel my bracelets. They must be twenty-four carats, pure inside and out.

I will never forget her look.

It’s too late to change you, but I’m telling you this because I worry about your baby.

I made a promise to myself: I would always remember my parents’ wishes, but I would never forget myself.

I couldn’t see the wind itself, but I could see it carried the water that filled the rivers and shaped the countryside.

What was happier than seeing everybody gobble down the shiny mushrooms and bamboo shoots I had helped to prepare that day?

And it was good news for me too. Because after the gold was removed from my body, I felt lighter, more free.

I learned to love Tyan-yu, but it is not how you think.

That was the day I was a young girl with my face under a red marriage scarf. I promised not to forget myself.

For all these years I kept my mouth closed so selfish desires would not fall out.

We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.

I did not lose myself all at once.

...I can recall the details of that entire day, as clearly as I see my daughter and the foolishness of her life.

A girl can never ask, only listen.

If you are still for a very long time, a dragonfly will no longer see you.

I discovered my shadow.

Standing perfectly still like that, I discovered my shadow.

I thought of Amah only as someone for my comfort... a blessing you appreciate and love only when it is no longer there.

And now that I am old, moving every year closer to the end of my life, I also feel closer to the beginning.

It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect from others, and eventually, though neither of us knew it at the time, chess games.

Wise guy, he not go against wind. In Chinese we say, Come from South, blow with wind—poom!—North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen.

Every time people come out from foreign country, must know rules. You not know, judge say, Too bad, go back.

Better you take it, find out why yourself.

A little knowledge withheld is a great advantage one should store for future use.

I carefully drew a handmade chessboard and pinned it to the wall next to my bed, where at night I would stare for hours at imaginary battles.

The wind leaves no trail.

Sometimes you need to lose pieces to get ahead.

Better to lose less, see if you really need.

Strongest wind cannot be seen.

The worst is on the other side.

Because, even as a young child, I could sense the unspoken terrors that surrounded our house.

When something goes against your nature, you are not in balance.

You must not walk in any direction but to school and back home.

How could she go back? Didn’t she see how terrible her life was?

I clung to this hope, day after day, night after night, year after year.

She had already experienced the worst. After this, there is no worst possible thing.

In the end, they declared her a Displaced Person, lost in a sea of immigration categories.

I still heard... but I saw something else.

Now you must come back, to the other side. Then you can see why you were wrong.

I realized that when you lose something you love, faith takes over.

You have to pay attention to what you lost.

You must think for yourself, what you must do.

This is your life, what you must do.

Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.

I learned this. I have put it in my memory.

When something that violent hits you, you can’t help but lose your balance.

And just as I think this, his feet are already in the air.

In return we have always tried to show our deepest respect.

And now I have come to take Bing back.

My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America.

There were so many ways for things to get better.

I won’t let her change me, I promised myself. I won’t be what I’m not.

Only two kinds of daughters,

"If the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold."

"Your future husband have one pock mark for every rice you not finish."

"Isn’t hate merely the result of wounded love?"

"Perhaps he was destined to be my husband."

"That feeling of fear never left me, that I would be caught someday, exposed as a sham of a woman."

"Why do you blame your culture, your ethnicity?"

"I became so thin now you cannot see her; she like a ghost, disappear."

"We have to change things... not this balance sheet, who owes who what."

"I didn’t get Arnold. I got Harold."

"Then why you don’t stop it?"

"Aren’t you going to say anything else?"

"You have career. You are busy. You want to live like mess what I can say?"

"Half of everything inside you is from your father’s side. This is natural. They are the Jong clan, Cantonese people. Good, honest people. Although sometimes they are bad-tempered and stingy."

"You think it is so easy. One day quit, next day play. Everything for you is this way. So smart, so easy, so fast."

"I know you hate him."

"Ai-ya! She thinks I am this bad!"

"You say the name of Taiyuan is Bing. Everyone from that city calls it that. Easier for you to say. Bing, it is a nickname."

"This is true, we always know how to win."

"You could be charged as an accessory to your own murder."

"The more spots the better. Everybody knows that."

The power of her words was that strong.

You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you.

But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak.

I could hear someone laughing.

I just want to show you something.

You can’t just pull me out of your life and throw me away.

Why do you not speak up for yourself?

A mother knows what is inside you.

Maybe they can’t be easily translated because they refer to a sensation that only Chinese people have.

There’s so much to think about, so much to decide.

This is your life’s importance.

I thought…maybe only just die. Maybe taste not too bad.

Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this.

Everybody else want best quality. You thinking different.

Sometime I think something is so good, I want to save it. Then I forget I save it.

You can make your legs go the other way.

I shake that crab before cook. His legs—droopy. His mouth—wide open, already like a dead person.

Even a beggar don’t want it.

This is young jade. It is a very light color now, but if you wear it every day it will become more green.

Why you want to follow behind her, chasing her words?

"If she doesn’t speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn’t try, she can lose her chance forever."

"All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way."

"Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else’s joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears."

"But I think, seeing my face like this, my mother changed."

"Now you see, why it is useless to cry."

"You must not forget. I was a first wife."

"Each time she returned, she remained in her bedroom, sitting all day like a Buddha, smoking her opium, talking softly to herself."

"And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow."

"I can see the truth, too. I am strong, too."

"Now they can do something else. Now they no longer have to swallow their own tears or suffer the taunts of magpies."

Her wisdom is like a bottomless pond. You throw stones in and they sink into the darkness and dissolve.

There is a part of her mind that is part of mine.

What good does it do to draw fancy buildings and then live in one that is useless?

I should remind my daughter not to put any babies in this room.

I thought nothing of these jars. They were junk in my mind.

My eyes, so bright and flashy at sixteen, are now yellow-stained, clouded. But I still see almost everything clearly.

There was a time when I knew a thing before it happened.

A tiger can make a soft prrrn-prrn noise deep within its chest and make even rabbits feel safe and content.

I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened.

I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear.

"When you go to China, you don’t even need to open your mouth. They already know you are an outsider."

"Aii-ya, even if you put on their clothes... they know just watching the way you walk, the way you carry your face. They know you do not belong."

"In America, nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you."

"How to know your own worth and polish it, never flashing it around like a cheap ring."

"Finish your coffee. Don’t throw your blessings away."

"You can see your character in your face. You can see your future."

"You have my ears, a big thick lobe, lots of meat at the bottom, full of blessings."

"You will be a good wife, mother, and daughter-in-law."

"Sometimes I wonder why I wanted to catch a marriage with your father. I think An-mei put the thought in my mind."

"It’s hard to keep your Chinese face in America."

"Once you are born Chinese, you cannot help but feel and think Chinese."

"It is in your blood, waiting to be let go."

"I had lived with my mother and then had lost her."

"They said they always revered her as their true mother."

"You must be the one to tell them. All these years, they have been dreaming of her."

"There is no shame in what she done. None."

"I think about my mother’s long-cherished wish. Me, the younger sister who was supposed to be the essence of the others."

"And I realized that the very thing I had feared, she had done."

"What is left—just pure essence."

"After all these years, it can finally be let go."