As an American man of the 1990s writing about a Japanese woman of the 1930s, I needed to cross three cultural divides – man to woman, American to Japanese, and present to past. Arthur Golden Read Quote
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 Read Quote
This character’s entirely invented, and the woman that I interviewed wouldn’t recognize herself, or really anything about herself, in this book, which she hasn’t read, because she doesn’t read English. Arthur Golden Read Quote
I worried she might spend an afternoon chatting with me about the sights and then wish me best of luck. Arthur Golden Read Quote
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. Arthur Golden Read Quote
What I had to do was keep the story within certain limits of what was, of course, plausible. Arthur Golden Read Quote
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 Read Quote