Arthur Golden
Arthur Golden
Arthur Goldenis an American writer. He is the author of the bestselling novel Memoirs of a Geisha...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth6 December 1956
CountryUnited States of America
hands long missing
Autobiography, if there really is such a thing, is like asking a rabbit to tell us what he looks like hopping through the grasses of the field. How would he know? If we want to hear about the field on the other hand, no one is in a better circumstance to tell us-so long as we keep in mind that we are missing all those things the rabbit was in no position to observe.
beautiful geisha ifs
Geisha is always called beautiful even if she is not.
misery miserable-people miserable
We can never flee the misery that is within us.
spring winter self
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.
said helpless
I didn't say to act dead. I said act helpless.
kind moments painful
At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.
sleep men elderly
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.
choices want geisha
We don't become geisha because we want our lives to be happy; we become geisha because we have no choice.
struggle party destiny
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.
feelings body might
And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped around my body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty. At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.
fire water personality
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 paths no one else has thought about -- the tiny hole through the roof or the bottom of the box. There's no doubt it's the most versatile of the five elements. It can wash away earth; it can put out fire; it can wear a piece of metal down and sweep it away. Even wood, which is its natural complement, can't survive without being nurtured by water. And yet, you haven't drawn on those strengths in living your life, have you?
destiny men needs
Every man has his destiny. But who needs to go to a fortune-teller to find it? Do I go to a chef to find out if I'm hungry?
giving dancer childhood
What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realized I'd never really tasted to things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been. What life would I have? I would be like the dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.
girl crowds empty
All at once I felt so vain, like a girl posturing for the crowds as she walks along, only to discover the street is empty.