My mother said I was a clingy kid until I was about four. I also remember that from the age of eight she and I fought almost every day.

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.

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.

I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.

I did not lose myself all at once.

I've always been a magnet for guilt.

But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better. -Jing-mei