Famous Quotes & Sayings

Arthur Golden Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Arthur Golden.

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Famous Quotes By Arthur Golden

Arthur Golden Quotes 325833

We human beings are only part of something much larger. When we walk along we may crush a battle or simply cause a change in the air so that a fly ends up where it might not have gone otherwise. And if we think of the same example but with ourselves in the role of the insect, and the larger universe in the role we've just played, it's perfectly clear that we're affected every day by races over which we have no control than the poor beetle has over our gigantic foot as it descends upon it. — Arthur Golden

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I fell into a sound sleep and dreamed that I was at a banquet back in Gion, talking with an elderly man who was explaining to me that his wife, whom he'd cared for deeply, wasn't really dead because the pleasure of their time together lived on inside him. — Arthur Golden

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I watched him walk away with sickness in my heart - though it was a pleasing kind of sickness, if such a thing exists. I mean to say that if you have experienced an evening more exciting than any in your life, you're sad to see it end; and yet you still feel grateful that it happened. In that brief encounter with the Chairman, I had changed from a lost girl facing a lifetime of emptiness to a girl with purpose in her life. Perhaps it seems odd that a casual meeting on the street could have brought about such change. But sometimes life is like that, isn't it? And I really do think if you'd been there to see what I saw, and feel what I felt, the same might have happened to you. — Arthur Golden

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If a few minutes of suffering could make me so angry, what would years of it do? Even a stone can be worn down with enough rain. — Arthur Golden

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Sometimes we get through adversity only by imagining what the world might be like if our dreams should ever come true. — Arthur Golden

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Was life nothing more than a storm that constantly washed away what had been there only a moment before, and left behind something barren and unrecognizable? — Arthur Golden

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We topped the ridge a few moments later, and the town of Senzuru came into view below us. The day was drab, everything in shades of gray. It was my first look at the world outside Yoroido, and I didn't think I'd missed much. I could see the thatched roofs of the town around an inlet, amid dull hills, and beyond them the metal-colored sea, broken with shards of white. Inland, the landscape might have been attractive but for the train tracks running across it like a scar. - Chapter 2, pg 20 — Arthur Golden

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I dont think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it. — Arthur Golden

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I went back to those graves not long afterward and found as I stood there that sadness was a very heavy thing. My body weighed twice what it had only a moment earlier, as if those graves were pulling me down toward them. — Arthur Golden

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Perhaps it seems odd that a casual meeting on the street could have brought about such change. But sometimes life is like that isn't it — Arthur Golden

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You seemed so desperate, like you might drown if someone didn't save you. — Arthur Golden

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Most nights I lay on my futon I was sick with anxiety, and felt a pit inside myself as big and empty as if the world were nothing more than giant hall empty of people. — Arthur Golden

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We all know that a winter scene, though it may be covered over one day, with even the trees dressed in shawls of snow, will be unrecognizable the following spring. Yet I never imagined such a thing could occur within our very selves. — Arthur Golden

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For 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 fathers didn't sell their daughters. — Arthur Golden

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I knew he noticed the tress, and the mud, and the children in the street, but I had no reason to believe he'd ever notice me. — Arthur Golden

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Is this how you act toward your honored guest? You must take him out onto the street and walk him around a bit to wake him up. The cold will do him good."
"He's lying in the snow. Isn't that cold enough? — Arthur Golden

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What I really wanted to know, though, was what it was like to be a geisha? Where do you sleep? What do you eat? How do you have your hair done? — Arthur Golden

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Nothing is bleaker than the future, except perhaps the past. — Arthur Golden

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Well, a peach has a lovely taste and so does a mushroom, but you can't put the two together ... — Arthur Golden

Arthur Golden Quotes 1663663

I knew even then that she was right. An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them. Nobu's touch had made a deeper impression on me than most. No one could tell me whether he would be my ultimate destiny, but I had always sensed the en between us. Somewhere in the landscape of my life Nobu would always be present. But could it really be that of all the lessons I'd learned, the hardest one lay just ahead of me? Would I really have to take each of my hopes and put them away where no one would ever see them again, where not even I would ever see them? — Arthur Golden

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Nothing like work for getting over a disappointment. — Arthur Golden

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If 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 darkness. — Arthur Golden

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I've often observed that men and women who were young children during these years [of defeat in war] have a certain seriousness about them; there was too little laughter in their childhoods. — Arthur Golden

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I have never read anything quite like Mark Haddon's funny and agonizingly honest book, or encountered a narrator more vivid and memorable. I advise you to buy two copies; you won't want to lend yours out. — Arthur Golden

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I understood that he left me at the end of his long life just as naturally as the leaves fall from the trees. — Arthur Golden

Arthur Golden Quotes 1110936

We human beings are only a part of something very much larger. When we walk along, we may crush a beetle or simply cause a change in the air so that a fly ends up where it might never have gone otherwise. And if we think of the same example but with ourselves in the role of the insect, and the larger universe in the role we've just played, it's perfectly clear that we're affected every day by forces over which we have no more control than the poor beetle has over our gigantic foot as it descends upon it. What are we to do? We 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. — Arthur Golden

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Grief 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 shiver. But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of it. — Arthur Golden

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Sometimes," he sighed, "I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see. — Arthur Golden

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But what I could see out of the corner of my eye made me think of two lovely bundles of silk floating along a stream. In a moment they were hovering on the walkway in front of me, where they sank down and smoothed their kimono across their knees. — Arthur Golden

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At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it. — Arthur Golden

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All my hard work in overhearing it was it was about as rewarding to me as a man who lugs a chest up the hill only to learn that its full of rocks. — Arthur Golden

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We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course. — Arthur Golden

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Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are. — Arthur Golden

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And suddenly everything around me seemed to grow quiet, as if he were the wind that blew and I were just a cloud carried upon it. — Arthur Golden

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Isn't there one thing I can ask of you that you won't disregard? ... You could just reply, "Yes, Baron," and be done with it.'
Yes, Baron. — Arthur Golden

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If Mother and Mameha couldn't come to an agreement, I would remain a maid all my life just as surely as a turtle remains a turtle — Arthur Golden

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I 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 - true equals - only when they both have equal confidence. — Arthur Golden

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We don't become geisha because we want our lives to be happy; we become geisha because we have no choice. — Arthur Golden

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This time all the historical details and things were right. But I'd written it again in third person, and people found it dry. I decided to throw that one away. — Arthur Golden

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Some people have difficulty telling the difference between something great and something they've simply heard of. — Arthur Golden

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The world was simply too cruel; how could I survive? — Arthur Golden

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It is confusing, because in this culture we really don't have anything that corresponds to geisha. — Arthur Golden

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Whatever our struggles,and whether we sink or swim,our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean — Arthur Golden

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But she told me I was like water..Water can carve its way through stone. And when trapped, water makes a new path. — Arthur Golden

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He lived in a world that was visible, even if it didn't always please him to be there. — Arthur Golden

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Now she took a close look at me for the first time, puffing on her pipe while the old woman beside her sighed. I didnt feel I could look at Mother directly, but I had the impression of smoke seeping out of her face like steam from a crack in the earth. I was so curious about her that my eyes took on a life of their own and began to dart about. The more I saw of her, the more fascinated I became. Her kimono was yellow, with willowy branches bearing lovely green and orange leaves; it was made of silk gauze as delicate as a spiders web. Her obi was every bit as astonishing to me. It was a lovely gauzy texture too, but heavier-looking, in russet and brown with gold threads woven through. The more I looked at her clothing, the less I was aware of standing there in that dirt corridor, or of wondering what had become of my sister and my mother and father and what would become of me. — Arthur Golden

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Dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes consume us completely. — Arthur Golden

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Flowers that grow where old ones have withered serve to remind us that death will one day come to us all. — Arthur Golden

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I've lived my life again just telling it to you. — Arthur Golden

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Neither you nor I can know your destiny. You may never know it! Destiny isn't always like a party at the end of the evening. Sometimes it's nothing more than struggling through life from day to day. — Arthur Golden

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I can tolerate his company for about half an hour. After that I am not responsible for the things I say! — Arthur Golden

Arthur Golden Quotes 2191966

Here's the thing: this eel spends its entire life trying to find a home, and what do you think women have inside them? Caves, where the eels like to live ... when they find a cave they like, the wriggle around inside it for a while to be sure that ... well, to be sure it's a nice cave, I suppose. And when they've made up their minds that it's comfortable, they mark the cave as their territory ... by spitting. — Arthur Golden

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Of course I was happy to sit and listen, but I understood perfectly well that the Chairman wasn't telling these things to me because he wanted me to know them. He was clearing them from his mind, just like draining water from a bucket. So I listened closely not to his words, but to the tone of his voice; because in the same way that sound rises as a bucket is emptied, I could hear the Chairman's voice softening as he spoke. — Arthur Golden

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This humble person has been alive long enough to see two generations of children grow up, and knows how rare it is for ordinary birds to give birth to a swan. The swan who goes on living in its parents' tree will die; this is why those who are beautiful and talented bear the burden of finding their own way into the world. — Arthur Golden

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If you keep your destiny in mind, every moment in life becomes an opportunity for moving closer to it. — Arthur Golden

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A geisha has studied a man's moods and his seasons. She fusses and he blooms. — Arthur Golden

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We human beings have a remarkable way of growing accustomed to things. — Arthur Golden

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Because I'd lived through adversity once before, what I learned about myself was like a reminder of something I'd once known but had nearly forgotten-namely, that beneath the elegant clothing, and the accomplished dancing, and the clever conversation, my life had no complexity at all, but was as simple as a stone falling toward the ground. My whole purpose in everything during the past ten years had been to win the affections of the Chairman. — Arthur Golden

Arthur Golden Quotes 2017946

Remember, Chiyo, geisha are not courtesans. And we are not wives. We sell our skills, not our bodies. We create another secret world, a place only of beauty. The very word "geisha" means artist and to be a geisha is to be judged as a moving work of art. — Arthur Golden

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The swan who goes on living in its parents' tree will die; this is why those who are beautiful and talented bear the burden of finding their own way in the world. — Arthur Golden

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A woman who acts like a fool is a fool. — Arthur Golden

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This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely. — Arthur Golden

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No one knows the author of memoir so well like himself. — Arthur Golden

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I felt I was standing on a stage many hours after the dance had ended, when the silence lay as heavily upon the empty theater as a blanket of snow. — Arthur Golden

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She paints her face to hide her face. Her eyes are deep water. It is not for Geisha to want. It is not for geisha to feel. Geisha is an artist of the floating world. She dances, she sings. She entertains you, whatever you want. The rest is shadows, the rest is secret. — Arthur Golden

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I 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 Golden

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His 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 birds in all of the branches. He had to struggle constantly to manage it and always looked worn out from the effort. — Arthur Golden

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By the time we arrived, as evening was approaching, I felt as sore as a rock must feel when the waterfall has pounded on it all day long. — Arthur Golden

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Finally the homeless eel marked its territory, I suppose, and the Doctor lay heavily upon me, moist with sweat. — Arthur Golden

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A woman living in a grand house may pride herself on all her lovely things; but the moment she hears the crackle of fire she decides very quickly which are the few she values the most. — Arthur Golden

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Those of us with water in our personalities don't pick where we'll flow to. All we can do is flow where the landscape of our lives carries us — Arthur Golden

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I'm not sure this will make sense to you but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction so that I no longer faced backward toward the past but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would the future be — Arthur Golden

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He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since. — Arthur Golden

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It was what we Japanese called the onion life, peeling away a layer at a time and crying all the while. — Arthur Golden

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A 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 its magnificence. — Arthur Golden

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Can't you see? Every step I have taken, since I was that child on the bridge, has been to bring myself closer to you. — Arthur Golden

Arthur Golden Quotes 675532

It struck me that we-that moth and I-were two opposite extremes. My existence was as unstable as a stream, changing in every
way; but the moth was like a piece of stone, changing not at all. While thinking this thought, I reached out a finger to feel the moth's velvety surface; but when I brushed it with my fingertip, it turned all at once into a pile of ash without even a sound, without even a moment in which I could see it crumbling. I was so astonished I let out a cry. The swirling in my mind stopped; I felt as if I had stepped into the eye of a storm. I let the tiny shroud and its pile of ashes flutter to the ground; and now I understood the thing that had puzzled me all morning. The stale air had washed away. The past was gone. — Arthur Golden

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The prettiest of them all is a girl who is pretty on the inside. — Arthur Golden

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Of course, a sign doesn't mean anything unless you know how to interpret it. — Arthur Golden

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Anyone can have a good day. The question is what do you do on a bad day. That's when you're being tested. In a very tangible sense, a bad day shows your innermost essence more than a good day. — Arthur Golden

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We can never flee the misery that is within us. — Arthur Golden

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I long ago developed a very practical smile, which I call my "Noh smile" because it resembles a Noh mask whose features are frozen. Its advantage is that men can interpret it however they want; you can imagine how often I've relied on it. — Arthur Golden

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We none of us find as much kindness in this world as we should. — Arthur Golden

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A memoir provides a record not so much of the memoirist as of the memoirist's world. — Arthur Golden

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After this, I couldn't hear their voices any longer; for in my ears I heard a sound like a bird's wings flapping in panic. Perhaps it was my heart, I don't know. But if you've ever seen a bird trapped inside the great hall of a temple, looking for some way out, well, that was how my mind was reacting. It had never occurred to me that my mother wouldn't simply go on being sick. I won't say I'd never wondered what might happen if she should die; I did wonder about it, in the same way I wondered what might happen if our house were swallowed up in an earthquake. There could hardly be life after such an event. — Arthur Golden

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I worried she might spend an afternoon chatting with me about the sights and then wish me best of luck. — Arthur Golden

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When I said these words, all the heat in my body seemed to rise to my face. I felt I might float up into the air, just like a piece of ash from a fire. — Arthur Golden

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People in the village often said she ought to have been extremely attractive, because her parents had been. Well, a peach has a lovely taste and so does a mushroom, but you can't put the two together; this was the terrible trick nature had played on her. — Arthur Golden

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I 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. — Arthur Golden

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Since the day I'd left Yoroido, I'd done nothing but worry that every turn of life's wheel would bring yet another obstacle into my path; and of course, it was the worrying and the struggle that had always made life so vividly real to me. — Arthur Golden

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Cards decorated with a colorful spray of plum blossoms in the background. Yasuda admired it for a moment before putting it into his shirt pocket. I had the feeling no words we spoke could be as eloquent as this simple interaction, so I bowed to him and went on to the next man. — Arthur Golden

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Yet somehow the thing that startled me most, after a week or two had passed, was that I had in fact survived. — Arthur Golden

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[ ... ] we drank each other up with so much yearning and need that afterward I felt myself drained of all the things the Chairman had taken from me, and yet filled with all that I had taken from him. — Arthur Golden

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To the eyes of the American soldiers who drove past, I looked no different from the women around me; and as I thought of it, who could say I was any different? If you no longer have leaves, or bark, or roots, can you go on calling yourself a tree? "I am a peasant," I said to myself, "and not a geisha at all any longer." It was a frightening feeling to look at my hands and see their roughness. To draw my mind away from my fears, I turned my attention again to the truckloads of soldiers driving past. Weren't these the very American soldiers we'd been taught to hate, who had bombed our cities with such horrifying weapons? Now they rode through our neighborhood, throwing pieces of candy to the children. — Arthur Golden

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When you want to break a board, cracking it in the middle is only the first step. Success comes when you bounce up and down with all your might until the board snaps in half — Arthur Golden

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Sadness was a very heavy thing. — Arthur Golden

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Of course the pace of change never slows, even when we've convinced ourselves it will. — Arthur Golden

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When I unwrapped the moth from its funeral shroud, it was the same startlingly lovely creature as on the day I had entombed it. Everything about it seemed beautiful and perfect, and so utterly unchanged. — Arthur Golden

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I 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 him. — Arthur Golden

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Memoirs give the knowledge about the author and his environment. They are different from biography. Memoirs do not get ahead, and the man who writes a biography looks at his future like at a very simple thing. — Arthur Golden