Arthur GoldenFrom this experience, I understood the danger of focusing only on what isn't there. What if I came to the end of my life and realized that I'd spent every day watching for a man w… ▶372LifeSadnessThought
Arthur GoldenI've lived my life again just telling it to you. ✨ Arthur Golden (2008). Memoirs Of A Geisha, p.428, Random House361Life
Arthur GoldenA tree may look as beautiful as ever; but when you notice the insects infesting it, and the tips of the branches that are brown from disease, even the trunk seems to lose some of … ▶372Death
Arthur GoldenI don't know when we'll see each other again or what the world will be like when we do. We may both have seen many horrible things. But I will think of you every time I need to be… ▶374ThoughtTime
Arthur GoldenYou know, the men go to tea houses with the expectation that they will have a nice quiet evening and not read about it the next morning in the newspaper. ✨ A talk with Arthu… ▶341Reading
Arthur GoldenTime your actions so you're not fighting against the currents but moving with them.352Time
Arthur GoldenAt that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy. ✨ Arthur Golden (2008). Memoirs Of A Geisha, p.187, Random House364SadnessTime
Arthur GoldenIf you keep your destiny in mind, every moment in life becomes an opportunity for moving closer to it.332LifeThoughtTime
Arthur GoldenGeisha because when I was living in Japan, I met a fellow whose mother was a geisha, and I thought that was kind of fascinating and ended up reading about the subject just about t… ▶376LifeReadingThought
Arthur GoldenIf those sorts of moments would be the only pleasure life offered me, I'd be better off shutting out that one brilliant source of light to let my eyes begin to adjust to the darkn… ▶344LifeTime
Arthur GoldenHis face was very heavily creased, and into each crease he had tucked some worry or other, so that it wasn't really his face any longer, but more like a tree that had nests of bir… ▶355Death
Arthur GoldenFor a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness-- a world in which fat… ▶344Time
Arthur GoldenI had to wonder if men were so blinded by beauty that they would feel privileged to live their lives with an actual demon, so long as it was a beautiful demon. ✨ Arthur Gold… ▶366Time
Arthur GoldenI never seek to defeat the man I am fighting, he explained. I seek to defeat his confidence. A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course to victory. Two men are equals - t… ▶377ThoughtTruth
Arthur GoldenYou seemed so desperate, like you might drown if someone didn't save you.345Reflection
Arthur GoldenI began to feel that all the people I'd ever known who had died or left me had not in fact gone away, but continued to live on inside me just as this man's wife lived on inside hi… ▶356DeathHumanityTruth
Arthur GoldenCouldn't the wrong sort of living turn anyone mean? I remembered very well that one day back in Yoroido, a boy pushed me into a thorn bush near the pond. By the time I clawed my w… ▶301LifePoliticsTime
Arthur GoldenIn the instant before the door opened, I could almost sense my life expanding just like a river whose waters have begun to swell; for I had never before taken such a drastic step … ▶313HopeLifeTime
Arthur GoldenWe none of us find as much kindness in this world as we should.357Reflection
Arthur GoldenIt was what we Japanese called the onion life, peeling away a layer at a time and crying all the while.358LifeSadnessTime
Arthur GoldenNothing in life is ever as simple as we imagine.281Life
Arthur GoldenI can see you have a great deal of water in your personality. Water never waits. It changes shape and flows around things, and finds the secret paths no one else has thought about… ▶281LifeReadingThought
Arthur GoldenI studied Japanese language and culture in college and graduate school, and afterward went to work in Tokyo, where I met a young man whose father was a famous businessman and whos… ▶315Death
Arthur GoldenIf you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.337Thought
Arthur GoldenIt's your duty to use what influence you have, unless you want to drift through life like a fish belly-up on the stream I wish I could believe that life really is something more t… ▶294Life
Arthur GoldenWe must use whatever methods we can to understand the movement of the universe around us and time our actions so that we are not fighting the currents, but moving with them. 294Time
Arthur GoldenGrief is a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it. It’s like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shi… ▶262SadnessTime
Arthur GoldenI could no more have stopped myself from feeling that sadness than you could stop yourself from smelling an apple that has been cut open on the table before you.284Sadness
Arthur GoldenWaiting patiently doesn't suit you. I can see you have a great deal of water in your personality. Water never waits. It changes shape and flows around things, and finds the secret… ▶284Thought
Arthur GoldenWhen we fight upstream against a rocky undercurrent, every foothold takes on a kind of urgency.251Time
