Amy Tan’s book ‘The Joy Luck Club’ was published in 1989.
It follows four Chinese American immigrant families in San Francisco as they start The Joy Luck Club.
Let’s have a look at some of the top quotes from The Joy Luck Club.
Table of Contents
The Joy Luck Club Quotes by Amy Tan
“Even though I did not understand her entire story, I understood her grief.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“People there only dream that it is China, because if you are Chinese you can never let go of China in your mind.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“Isn’t hate merely the result of wounded love?” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“What use for? asks my mother, jiggling the table with her hand. You put something else on top, everything fall down.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“Because I think to myself, even today, how can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“I was no longer scared. I could see what was inside me.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
Related Book Quotes: Living to Tell the Tale Quotes by Gabriel García Márquez and The Woman Warrior Quotes by Maxine Hong Kingston
Quotes from The Joy Luck Club
“There’s no hope. There’s no reason to keep trying. Because you must. This is not hope. Not reason. This is your fate. This is your life, what you must do.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“Can you imagine how it is, to want to be neither inside nor outside, to want to be nowhere and disappear?” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“I am ashamed she is ashamed. Because she is my daughter and I am proud of her, and I am her mother but she is not proud of me.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“I think now that fate is half shaped by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. You have to pay attention to what you lost. You have to undo the expectation.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
Best Joy Luck Club Quotes
“For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“Now you see,’ said the turtle, drifting back into the pond, ‘why it is useless to cry. 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.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“Ying-ying, you have tiger eyes. They gather fire in the day. At night they shine golden.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“Now I was a tiger that neither pounced nor lay waiting between the trees. I became an unseen spirit.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents’ promise. This means nothing to you, because to you promises mean nothing… But later, she will forget her promise. She will forget she had a grandmother.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“A little knowledge withheld is a great advantage one should store for future use.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“I felt foolish and tired, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind to discover there was no one there.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“If I look upon my whole life, I cannot think of another time when I felt more comfortable: when I had no worries, fears, or desires, when my life seemed as soft and lovely as lying inside a cocoon of rose silk.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
Top Joy Luck Club Quotes
“We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“I tried to keep very still, but my heart felt like crickets scratching to get out of the cage.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“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. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“I thought about things, the pros and cons. But in the end I would be so confused, because I never believed there was ever any one right answer, yet there were many wrong ones.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“Too many good things all seem the same after a while.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
“The things one had to do in life sometimes had nothing to do with what was fun or convenient.” ~ Amy Tan (quote from The Joy Luck Club).
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