Amy Tan Valley Of Amazement Quotes

Memory is like patches of sunlight in an overcast valley, shifting with the movement of the clouds. Now and then the light will fall on a particular point in time, illuminating it for a moment before the wind seals up the gap, and the world is in shadows again. ~ Tan Twan Eng

Silicon Valley, "the largest legal creation of wealth in history," was built largely by unprofessional amateurs using math, sand, and the institutions of freedom. The Soviet Union had the greatest mathematicians on earth, and plenty of sand, but without the institutions of freedom their brilliant mathematicians were not empowered to create those devices that are changing the world. ~ Michael Strong

I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and, in that respect, I liked Bible stories, because to me they were very gothic. ~ Amy Tan

Yet part of me also thinks the whole idea makes perfect sense. The three of us, leaving our differences behind, stepping on the plane together, sitting side by side, lifting off, moving West to reach the East. ~ Amy Tan

The life we receive is not always what we choose. ~ Amy Tan

But to pretend that all was right with the world, I first had to know what was wrong. ~ Amy Tan

A few times I invited Ba to visit me from the World of Yin. But other yin friends tell me he is stuck somewhere else, a foggy place where people believe their lies are true. ~ Amy Tan

I thought:
maybe death
isn't darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us
as soft as feathers
that we are instantly weary
of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes,
not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river
that is without the least dapple or shadow
that is nothing but light - scalding, aortal light
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.
White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field ~ Mary Oliver

When I go back and read my journals or fiction, I am always surprised. I may not remember having those thoughts, but they still exist and I know they are mine, and it's all part of making sense of who I am. ~ Amy Tan

My life was such a cluster right now. Starting something with Beau was the epitome of stupid, but damn, his fingers had felt good against my face. And that spark in his eyes was a beacon calling to my soul. Telling me to dock my fucked-up ship in his port and he'd make sure it didn't sink. ~ Devney Perry

It was a joy, though, to get down into the valley and lose sight of all that open sky space underneath everything and finally, as it got graying five o'clocking, about a hundred yards from the other boys and walking alone, to just pick my way singing and thinking along the little black cruds of a deer trail through the rocks, no call to think or look ahead or worry, just follow the little balls of deer crud with your eyes cast down and enjoy life. ~ Jack Kerouac

Then the stars went out, for the bark of Ra, in fiery splendor, burst out of the East. Sunshine flooded the wide desert and the long, green valley of the Nile. The night was over; a new day had dawned for the land of Egypt. ~ Eloise Jarvis McGraw

Jessica stopped a few feet away so that Ken could get an optimal view of her body posed against the seductive backdrop of the sea, sand, and palm trees. ~ Francine Pascal

The Path Out Of The Valley Appears When You Choose To See Things Differently. ~ Spencer Johnson

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

Keanu Reeves?" she asks in amazement. I nod. "What did he wish for?" "Isn't it obvious?" I say, waving a hand at the screen. "Fame." "That's why he's famous? Because of a wish?" "Have you seen his movies? Surely you didn't think he made it on his acting skills?" I grant wishes; I don't work miracles. Viola looks back at the screen, eyes screwed up in awe. "I guess that makes sense," she says faintly as my former master delivers a line poorly. "Wow. ~ Jackson Pearce

Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful ~ Oscar Wilde

The great self-limitation practiced by man for ten centuries yielded, between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, the whole flower of the so-called "Renaissance." The root, usually, does not resemble the fruit in appearance, but there is an undeniable connection between the root's strength and juiciness and the beauty and taste of the fruit. The Middle Ages, it seems, have nothing in common with the Renaissance and are opposite to it in every way; nonetheless, all the abundance and ebullience of human energies during the Renaissance were based not at all on the supposedly "renascent" classical world, nor on the imitated Plato and Virgil, nor on manuscripts torn from the basements of old monasteries, but precisely on those monasteries, on those stern Franciscians and cruel Dominicans, on Saints Bonaventure, Anselm of Canterbury, and Bernard of Clairvaux. The Middle Ages were a great repository of human energies: in the medieval man's asceticism, self-abnegation, and contempt for his own beauty, his own energies, and his own mind, these energies, this heart, and this mind were stored up until the right time. The Renaissance was the epoch of the discovery of this trove: the thin layer of soil covering it was suddenly thrown aside, and to the amazement of following centuries dazzling, incalculable treasures glittered there; yesterday's pauper and wretched beggar, who only knew how to stand on crossroads and bellow psalms in an inharmonious voice, suddenly started to bloom w ~ Vasily Rozanov

Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will-
The right thing happens to the happy man.
The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;
The hill becomes the valley, and is still;
Let others delve that mystery if they can.
God bless the roots! -Body and soul are one
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.
Child of the dark, he can out leap the sun,
His being single, and that being all:
The right thing happens to the happy man.
Or he sits still, a solid figure when
The self-destructive shake the common wall;
Takes to himself what mystery he can,
And, praising change as the slow night comes on,
Wills what he would, surrendering his will
Till mystery is no more: No more he can.
The right thing happens to the happy man. ~ Theodore Roethke

Returning to the library, Marcus saw Lillian lying on her back on the carpeted floor. His first thought was that she must have drifted into oblivion, but as he approached, he saw that she was holding a long wooden cylinder in her free hand, and squinting through one end. "I found it," she exclaimed in triumph. "The kaleidoscope. It's verrrry interesting. But not quite what I 'spected."
Silently he reached out, plucked the instrument from her hand, and gave her the other end to look through.
Lillian promptly gasped in amazement. "Oh, that's lovely ... How does it work?"
"One end is fitted with strategically placed panels of silvered glass, and then ... " His voice faded as she turned the thing toward him.
"My lord," she pronounced in solemn concern, viewing him through the cylinder, "you have three ... hundred ... eyes." She dissolved into a fit of giggles that shook her until she dropped the kaleidoscope. ~ Lisa Kleypas

You can't stay in the dark for too long. Something inside you starts to fade, and you become like a starving person, crazy-hungry for light. ~ Amy Tan

We had always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the Many Colored Grass. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

1. Always wait between books for the springs to fill up and flow over. 2. Always preserve within a wild sanctuary, an inaccessible valley of reveries. 3. Always, and as far as it is possible, endeavor to touch life on every side; but keep the central vision of the mind, the inmost light, untouched and untouchable. ~ Ellen Glasgow

I saw my mother in a different light. We all need to do that. You have to be displaced from what's comfortable and routine, and then you get to see things with fresh eyes, with new eyes. ~ Amy Tan

This view of the next valley is a view, at one remove, of your own mind, of everybody's mind as it exists above and below the level of personal history. Mysteries of darkness; but the darkness teems with life. Apocalypses of light; and the light shines out as brightly from the flimsy little houses as from the trees, the grass, the blue spaces between the clouds. We do our best to disprove the fact, but a fact it remains; man is as divine as nature, as infinite as the Void. But that's getting perilously close to theology, and nobody was ever saved by a notion. ~ Aldous Huxley

The object of facing up squarely to the fact of the climacteric is to acquire serenity and power. If women on the youthful side of the climacteric could glimpse what this state of peaceful potency might be, the difficulties of making the transition would be less. It is the nature of the case that life beyond the menopause is as invisible to the woman who has yet to struggle through the change as to the top of any mountain is invisible from the valley below. Calm and poise do not simply happen to the post menopausal woman, she has to fight for them. ~ Germain Greer

Dementia was like a truth serum. ~ Amy Tan

Kaladin screamed, reaching the end of the bridge. Finding a tiny surge of strength somewhere, he raised his spear and threw himself off the end of the wooden platform, launching into the air above the cavernous void.
Bridgemen cried out in dismay. Syl zipped about him with worry. Parshendi looked up with amazement as a lone bridgeman sailed through the air toward them.
His drained, worn-out body barely had any strength left. In that moment of crystallized time, he looked down on his enemies. Parshendi with their marbled red and black skin. Soldiers raising finely crafted weapons, as if to cut him from the sky. Strangers, oddities in carapace breastplates and skullcaps. Many of them wearing beards.
Beards woven with glowing gemstones.
Kaladin breathed in.
Like the power of salvation itself - like rays of sunlight from the eyes of the Almighty - Stormlight exploded from those gemstones. It streamed through the air, pulled in visible streams, like glowing columns of luminescent smoke. Twisting and turning and spiraling like tiny funnel clouds until they slammed into him.
And the storm came to life again. ~ Brandon Sanderson

It was a constant source of amazement to Alexia that the only thing she had ever done in her entire life that pleased her mama was marry a werewolf. ~ Gail Carriger

A mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place. She teaches you the nature of happiness: what is the right amount, what is too much, and the kind that makes you want more of what is bad for you. A mother helps her baby flex her first feelings of pleasure. She teaches her when to later exercise restraint, or to take squealing joy in recognizing the fluttering leaves of the gingko tree, to sense a quieter but more profound satisfaction in chancing upon an everlasting pine. A mother enables you to realize that there are different levels of beauty and therein lie the sources of pleasure, some of which are popular and ordinary, and thus of brief value, and others of which are difficult and rare, and hence worth pursuing. ~ Amy Tan

In most parts of the world, starting a company that goes bust is dubbed a 'failure.' In Silicon Valley, we call this 'gaining experience.' We are willing to take the risks that are inherent for innovation. ~ Sebastian Thrun

Dear Rocky,
Here I am taking my pencil in my hand to say hello, hoping you are in the best of health, both physically and mentally. As for me, I am fine thanks to Almighty God.
The weather in the valley is in the shits. It's been raining since Thanksgiving and here it is almost at the end of December and it's still raining. Instead of growing a prick, I think I'm going to grow a tail, like a tadpole. Ha, ha, ha! ~ Rocky Gamez

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.
-Rose ~ Amy Tan

Great compassion is the root of altruistic action, the object of amazement to the world;there is no greater source of help and happiness. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Human eloquence or persuasiveness of speech are the mere trappings of the dead, if the living Spirit be absent; the prophet may preach to the bones in the valley, but it must be the breath from Heaven which will cause the slain to live. ~ D.L. Moody

Once upon a time, there was a civilization in the eastern side of the world. It was one of the most advanced civilizations on the planet that existed during that time.
This civilization was the glorious Indus valley civilization. No, I am not talking about India. I am talking about the land of greatness that got lost in time. Today, in the same geographical location of that great civilization, we have a piece of earth, which is known as "India". But do not mistake it to be the same glorious land that existed thousands of years ago, along with other magnificent civilizations, such as the Greeks, the Mayans, the Egyptians, the Babylonians etc. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The two men were slowly pacing the terrace in front of Dr. Raymond's house. The sun still hung above the western mountain-line, but it shone with a dull red glow that cast no shadows, and all the air was quiet; a sweet breath came from the great wood on the hillside above, and with it, at intervals, the soft murmuring call of the wild doves. Below, in the long lovely valley, the river wound in and out between the lonely hills, and, as the sun hovered and vanished into the west, a faint mist, pure white, began to rise from the hills. Dr. Raymond turned sharply to his friend. Safe? Of course it is. In itself the operation is a perfectly simple one; any surgeon could do it. ~ Arthur Machen

They were not bad men. They had worked hard on behalf of the valley for hundreds of
years. But it is possible, after a while, to develop certain dangerous habits of thought. One is
that, while all important enterprises need careful organization, it is the organization that needs
organizing, rather than the enterprise. And another is that tranquillity is always a good thing. ~ Terry Pratchett

She moved toward Sebastian- Jonathan- and then froze, standing over him, staring down with a look of amazement, mixed with a terrible horror.
"Mother?" Jonathan said. ~ Cassandra Clare