We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.

The speaker links dreaming with agency: dreams are not mere fantasies but a psychological resource that generates hope and keeps open the possibility of transformation. By equating “stopping dreaming” with accepting an unchangeable fate, the line argues that resignation is itself a kind of self-imposed determinism. The quote’s force comes from its moral logic—hope sustains action, and action is what alters outcomes—so abandoning dreams becomes tantamount to surrendering one’s capacity to revise one’s life story. In Tan’s broader thematic terrain, such a sentiment also resonates with tensions between inherited narratives (family, culture, expectation) and the individual’s power to reinterpret or redirect them.