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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

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

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I saw what I had been fighting for: it was for me, a scared child.
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How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently?
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And when I say that is certainly true, that our marriage is over. I know what else she will say: Then you must save it. And even though I know it's hopeless- there's absolutely nothing left to save-I'm afraid if I tell her that, she'll still persuade me to try.
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Only two kinds of daughters, she shouted in Chinese. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!
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We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.
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In [writing] fiction, every sentence is its own reward.
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Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.
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Ying-ying, you have tiger eyes. They gather fire in the day. At night they shine golden.
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But later that day, the streets of Kweilin were strewn with newspapers reporting great Kuomintang victories, and on top of these papers, like fresh fish from a butcher, lay rows of people - men, women and children who had never lost hope, but had lost their lives instead.
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If you are greedy, what is inside you is what makes you always hungry.
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