the opposite of fate

During my holidays I read the autobiography of Amy Tan, American author, "The Opposite of Fate". It is a really great read. Here a couple of passages amongst many that I especially liked...

"(it) forced me to wonder and consider that everything that happens is neither grand plan nor random coincidence. It is a crazy quilt of love, pieced together, torn apart, repaired again and again, and strong enough to protect us all...What are ghosts if not the hope that love continues beyond our ordinary senses? If ghosts are a delusion, then let me be deluded. Let me believe in the limitlessness of love, the beauty of contradictions, the miracle that is an ordinary part of life".

"Writing to me is an act of faith, a hope that I will discover what I mean by truth. But I don't know what that will be until I finish. I can't determine it ahead of time. And more often than not, I can't summarize what it is I've discovered. It's simply a feeling. The feeling is the entire story. To paraphrase the feeling or to analyze the story reduces the feeling for me.

I also think of reading as an act of faith, a hope I will discover something remarkable about ordinary life, about myself. And if the writer and the reader discover the same thing, if they have that connection, the act of faith has resulted in an act of magic. To me, that's the mystery and the wonder of both life and fiction - the connection between two unique individuals who discover in the end that they are more the same than they are different.

And if that doesn't happen, it's noboby's fault. There are still plenty of other books on the shelf to choose from."