Arthur Golden Quotes

More faults are often committed while we are trying to oblige than while we are giving offense.

A bad mood is like bad breath. Both are wrong to inflict onto others

When you perform, you can convey emotions differently, and your look can reflect each of those emotions.

Obviously I ask my family and loved ones for advice here and there, but I kind of have a rule with the people I love that surround me - close family and close friends - that unless I ask for it, I don't really want advice thrown out.

I don't think I have the right to give someone advice when I don't know them.

For myself I don't like the geisha look. It's like a mask.

I 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 whose mother was a geisha. He and I never discussed his parentage, which was an open secret, but it fascinated me.

In Wales, singing and storytelling are party skills, not professions.

Every culture is different in terms of what is taboo and what is acceptable. I grew up in Singapore, where people are very mindful of that. One can see that as restriction or as consideration for a fellow person living within a shared environment.

I am very sweet generally, but if someone tries to be over-smart by speaking to me in fancy English, then I go: 'who are you?' It isn't right.

I write, "Give me reason but don't give me choice, because I'll make the same mistake again." I think that's what most men want to be told.

Indeed, among the lesser auxiliaries to success in love, an absence, the declining of an invitation to dinner, an unintentional, unconscious harshness are of more service than all the cosmetics and fine clothes in the world.

I know that there are things that never have been funny, and never will be. And I know that ridicule may be a shield, but it is not a weapon.

Let the other person save face.

There will never be color blindness in a culture of fear.

I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating.

She had been bored all afternoon by Percy Gryce... but she could not ignore him on the morrow, she must follow up her success, must submit to more boredom, must be ready with fresh compliances and adaptibilities, and all on the bare chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour of boring her for life.

Women intrinsically understand human dynamics, and that makes them unstoppable. Unfortunately, the average man is less adroit at fostering such rivalries, which is why most men remain average; males are better at hating things that can't hate them back (e.g., lawnmowers, cats, the Denver Broncos, et cetera). They don't see the big picture.

From my opinion, 'geisha' means a woman skilled in the arts. Like dancing, singing and playing musical instruments.

Moods should be heard but never danced to.

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

The most intense thing I’ve ever done was bring a girl to Passover dinner.

I would throw out the sense of nation, "good breeding," certain forms and ceremonies that govern relationships - perhaps even jealousy. We're not aware of all of them yet, though we suffer from them. And they mislead us not only about ethics but also about aesthetics.

It doesn't do you any service to demonize any group of people. It's much better to try and understand from the inside.

The first rule that a geisha is taught, at the age of nine, is to be charming to other women...Every girl in the world should have geisha training.