"The Joy Luck Club" Quotes

Each person is made of five different elements, she told me. Too much fire and you had a bad temper. That was like my father, whom my mother always critiqued. Too little wood and you bent too quickly to listen to other people's ideas, unable to stand on your own. That was like me, who let people talk me out of things. Too much water and you flowed in too many directions. Like Auntie An-mei, who could not hold onto anything she had, her husband or her children or even a house she'd won gambling one time. Too little water and you became dry and cracked. That was like Auntie Lindo, who'd never shed tears for anyone.

I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect from others, and eventually, though neither of us knew it at the time, chess games.

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

A daughter is a treasure and a cause of sleeplessness.

You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother's before her. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh.

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.

The father is the one who chooses our life's direction.

I had not been born until I had the idea of my mother.

I looked at my own reflection until I no longer saw myself. I was strong. I was pure. I had no reason to fear.

I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character.