Among writers, if you don't have a therapist, it's like saying you don't keep a journal or use the thesaurus. It's a natural accompaniment.
Amy TanRead
He asked if he could recite a poem he had written that morning: 'You speak,' he said, 'the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset. I want to follow its trail to eternity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses the beauty and transience of poetic language, likening it to celestial phenomena.
In this quote, Amy Tan captures the essence of poetry as a profound form of expression that transcends time and space. The speaker is enchanted by the poetic language of another, describing it with vivid imagery of shooting stars and sunrises, which symbolize the fleeting yet impactful nature of such expressions. It conveys a desire to embrace the depth of artistic creativity and the longing to grasp something eternal in the beauty of words.
Themes
PoetryBeautyTransienceArtExpression
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of art in expressing human emotions.
More from Amy Tan
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You can't have intentions without consequences. The question is, who pays for the consequences? Saving fish from drowning. Same thing. Who’s saved? Who’s not?
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I am fascinated by language in daily life: the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.
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Even if I had expected it, even if I had known what I was going to do with my life, it would have knocked the wind out of me. When something that violent hits you, you can't help but lose your balance and fall. And after you pick yourself up, you realize you can't trust anybody to save you- not your husband, not your mother, not God. So what can you do to stop yourself from tilting and falling all over again?
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And for all those years, we never talked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible accusations afterward at the piano bench. All that remained unchecked, like a betrayal that was now unbreakable. So I never found a way to ask her why she had hoped something so large that failure was inevitable. And even worse, I never asked her what frightened me the most: Why had she given up hope?
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