I think I’ve always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success.

Tan describes a psychological posture shaped by bereavement: after profound loss, hope can feel dangerous because it invites the possibility of being hurt again. By expecting rejection and failure, she adopts a defensive realism—lowering emotional stakes and maintaining control in uncertain situations. The second sentence underscores how this coping strategy can distort one’s relationship to achievement: success arrives as something unfamiliar, even destabilizing, because the mind has rehearsed disappointment more than fulfillment. Read as an author’s self-reflection, the quote also gestures toward the emotional costs behind creative ambition—how resilience and caution can coexist, and how grief can quietly set the terms on which a person permits themselves to want things.