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.

Words to me were magic. You could say a word and it could conjure up all kinds of images or feelings or a chilly sensation or whatever. It was amazing to me that words had this power.

For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.

I always thought it mattered, to know what is the worst possible thing that can happen to you, to know how you can avoid it, to not be drawn by the magic of the unspeakable.

It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.

It was a distorted form of inverse logic: If hopes never come true, then hope for what you don't want.

To come so far, to lose so much and to find nothing. -Jing-mei