“This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“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, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“I 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 reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“I dont think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“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, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“Sometimes," he sighed, "I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see. ”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“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, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“Sometimes we get through adversity only by imagining what the world might be like if our dreams should ever come true.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“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, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“Now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“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, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“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, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“Water is powerful. It can wash away earth, put out fire, and even destroy iron.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“From 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 who would never come to me? What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realize I'd never really tasted the things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been, because I'd thought of nothing but the Chairman even while my life was drifting away from me. And yet if I drew my thoughts back from him, what life would I have? I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“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.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course of victory.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“We can never flee the misery that is within us.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“If you keep your destiny in mind, every moment in life becomes an opportunity for moving closer to it.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“Waiting 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 paths no one else has thought about.
[Mameha]”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“Of course, a sign doesn't mean anything unless you know how to interpret it.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“We none of us find as much kindness in this world as we should.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“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, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“You cannot say to the sun, 'More sun,' or to the rain, 'Less rain.' To a man, geisha can only be half a wife. We are the wives of nightfall. And yet, to learn kindness after so much unkindness, to understand that a little girl with more courage than she knew, would find her prayers were answered, can that not be called happiness? After all these are not the memoirs of an empress, nor of a queen. These are memoirs of another kind.”
― Arthur Golden, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
“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, quote from Memoirs of a Geisha
Arthur Golden
Born place: in Chattanooga, Tennessee, The United States
Born date December 6, 1956
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“He’s had ten years to make you fall in love with him. I haven’t had ten weeks! Tell me how that’s fair!”
― Sandy Williams, quote from The Shadow Reader
“I think what's happened, Marlee, is that you've realized the world isn't an addition problem. We tell kids that sometimes. We pretend the world is straightforward, simple, easy. You do this, you get that. You're a good person and try your best, and nothing bad will happen. But the truth is, the world is much more like an algebraic equation. With variables and changes, complicated and messy. Sometimes there's more than one answer, and sometimes there is none. Sometimes we don't even know how to solve the problem. But usually, if we take things step by step, we can figure things out. You just have to remember to factor the equation, break it down into smaller parts.”
― Kristin Levine, quote from The Lions of Little Rock
“Show up for your own life, he said. Don't pass your days in a stupor, content to swallow whatever watery ideas modern society may bottle-feed you through the media, satisfied to slumber through life in an instant-gratification sugar coma. The most extraordinary gift you've been given is your own humanity, which is about conciousness, so honor that consciousness.
Revere your senses; don't degrade them with drugs, with depression, with wilful oblivion. Try to notice something new everyday, Eustace said. Pay attention to even the most modest of daily details. Even if you're not in the woods, be aware at all times. Notice what food tastes like; notice what the detergent aisle in the supermarket smells like and recognize what those hard chemical smells do to your senses; notice what bare feet fell like; pay attention every day to the vital insights that mindfulness can bring. And take care of all things, of every single thing there is - your body, your intellect, your spirit, your neighbours, and this planet. Don't pollute your soul with apathy or spoil your health with junk food any more than you would deliberately contaminate a clean river with industrial sludge.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, quote from The Last American Man
“The truth is this: Pride must die in you or nothing of heaven can live in you. Under the banner of the truth, give yourself up to the meek and humble spirit of the holy Jesus. Humility must sow the seed or there can be no reaping in heaven. Look not at pride only as an unbecoming temper, nor at humility only as a decent virtue: for the one is death and the other is life; the one is hell and the other is heaven. So much as you have of pride within you, you have of the fallen angel alive in you; so much as you have of true humility, so much you have of the Lamb of God within you.”
― Andrew Murray, quote from Humility
“One less sweet angel about to get burned where the devils come to play.”
― Lucian Bane, quote from Dom Wars: Round One
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