Quote

Shanghainese people are good negotiators, they're very persistent, and you grow up in an atmosphere like that - very competitive. That becomes part of your personality, Shanghai personality becomes part of yours.

Amy Tan

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Amy Tan
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: February 19
Essayist
Film Writer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Oakland
California
Amy Ruth Tan
Grows
Negotiators
Part
Shanghai
Good
Persistent
Like
Competitive
People
Atmosphere
Personality
Grow
Becomes

More quotes by Amy Tan

Image
Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.
Amy Tan
Image
We are the kind of people who obsess over one word... but we have only one shot to get it right in concert. It was hard the first time I practiced with them. I was so nervous that my vocal chords were paralyzed for about a half-hour.
Amy Tan
Image
I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.
Amy Tan
Image
I won't be what I'm not. -Jing-mei
Amy Tan
Image
I have survivor skills. Some of that is superficial - what I present to people outwardly - but what makes people resilient is the ability to find humour and irony in situations that would otherwise overpower you.
Amy Tan
Image
Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.
Amy Tan
Image
And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.
Amy Tan
Image
It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.
Amy Tan
Image
Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone.
Amy Tan
Image
The muse appears at the point in my writing when I sense a subtle shift, a nudge to move over, and everything cracks open, the writing is freed, the lanuage is full, resources are plentiful, ideas pour forth, and to be frank, some of these ideas surprise me. It seems as thought the universe is my friend and is helping me write, its hand over mine.
Amy Tan
Image
Seeing her this last time, I threw myself on her body. And she opened her eyes slowly. I was not scared. I knew she could see me and what she had finally done. So i shut her eyes with my fingers and told her with my heart: I cah see the truth, too. I am strong, too.
Amy Tan
Image
People think it's a terrible tragedy when somebody has Alzheimer's. But in my mother's case, it's different. My mother has been unhappy all her life. For the first time in her life, she's happy.
Amy Tan
Image
It was a distorted form of inverse logic: If hopes never come true, then hope for what you don't want.
Amy Tan
Image
I wanted to write stories for myself. At first it was purely an aesthetic thing about craft. I just wanted to become good at the art of something. And writing was very private.
Amy Tan
Image
My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten.
Amy Tan
Image
Words are more ardent if a man must struggle to find them.
Amy Tan
Image
I saw what I had been fighting for: it was for me, a scared child.
Amy Tan
Image
When you lose your face..., it is like dropping your necklace down a well. The only way you can get it back is to fall in after it.
Amy Tan
Image
If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.
Amy Tan
Image
I felt like a rich vagabond who had passed through the world paving my way with gold fairy dust, then realizing too late that the path disintegrated as soon as I passed over it.
Amy Tan