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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
Grows
Negotiators
Part
Shanghai
Good
Persistent
Like
Competitive
People
Atmosphere
Personality
Grow
Becomes

More quotes by Amy Tan

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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.
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Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.
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When you already believe something, how can you suddenly stop? When you are a loyal friend, how can you no longer be one?
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And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every direction.
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Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth.
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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.
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Memory feeds imagination.
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Sometimes you change to survive, and some things you don't give up, or you're too prideful, and then you think well, what's pride? Is it a good thing? Maybe it's a bad thing. That's what I look at in my life. It's always a question in my life I look at, and I never find the answer, because if I did, probably I wouldn't have books to write.
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Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.
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We all become different readers in how we respond to books, why we need them, what we take from them. We become different in the questions that arise as we read, in the answers that we find, in the degree of satisfaction or unease we feel with those answers...In the hands of a different reader, the same story can be a different story.
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We are living in a world where everything is false. The society is like bright paint applied on top of rotten wood.
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If I look upon my whole life, I cannot think of another time when I felt more comfortable: when I had no worries, fears, or desires, when my life seemed as soft and lovely as lying inside a cocoon of rose silk.
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I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice.
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All objects exist in a moment of time.
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No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.
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Now I was a tiger that neither pounced nor lay waiting between the trees. I became an unseen spirit.
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My favorite anything is always relative to the context of present time, place and mood. When I finish a book and want to immediately find another by the same author and no other, that author is elevated to my favorite.
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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.
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I was punched breathless by the strongest emotions I have ever felt and they are now stored in my intuition as a writer.
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On the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mother's case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow.
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