Arthur Golden

Water never waits. It changes shape and flows around things, and finds the secret paths no one else has thought about.

Being sent out into the world isn't necessarily the same as leaving your home behind you.

(Of Hatsumomo) She was like a fabric taken from its warm closet and hung out of doors where the harsh weather will gradually consume it.

I don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.

Occasionally in life we come upon things we can't understand because we have never seen anything similar.

Now I understood the thing I´d overlooked;the point wasn´t to become a geisha but to be one. To become a geisha . . . well, that was hardly a purpose in life. But to be a geisha . . . I could see it now as a stepping-stone to something else.

I felt as a bird must feel when it has flown across the ocean and comes upon a creature that knows its nest.

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.