A Quote by Arthur Golden

Geisha because when I was living in Japan, I met a fellow whose mother was a geisha, and I thought that was kind of fascinating and ended up reading about the subject just about the same time I was getting interested in writing fiction.

Arthur Golden

Quote Topics

About Because Ended Fascinating Fellow Fiction Geisha Getting Interested Japan Just Kind Living Met Mother Reading Same Same Time Subject Thought Time Up Whose Writing Writing Fiction

Quote Author

Arthur Golden
American - Writer
Born: December 6, 1956

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

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.

Diana Vreeland

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

Arthur Golden

She paints her face to hide her face. Her eyes are deep water. It is not for Geisha to want. It is not for geisha to feel. Geisha is an artist of the floating world. She dances, she sings. She entertains you, whatever you want. The rest is shadows, the rest is secret.

Arthur Golden

There's nothing in Chinese culture that is an equivalent of the geisha. It's so different, so special to Japan.

Zhang Ziyi

The reason I started writing movies was because I kept getting parts that I just kind of stepped into. I didn't have to do a lot of work and I ended up getting sort of bored.

Scott Caan

It is confusing, because in this culture we really don't have anything that corresponds to geisha.

Arthur Golden

I have been presented with roles with demand not just a physical ability but mental disciplines as well. 'Memoirs of a Geisha' was not so much about physical exertion...it was much more graceful and contained than that.

Michelle Yeoh

My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him. I had some sort of gift and when it came time to try to find a publisher I had a little bit of an "in" because I had his agent I could turn to, to at least read my initial offerings when I was about 20. But the only problem was that they were just awful, they were just terrible stories and my agent, who ended up being my agent, was very, very sweet about it, but it took about four years until I actually had something worth trying to sell.

Anne Lamott

In junior high I read a lot of Stephen King, whose Americana approach to writing was often about "the terror next door" and at the same time I was reading a lot of Clive Barker, who was on the other end of the horror pendulum: insidious and disturbingly psychological. I found it fascinating how these two authors came at horror from two totally different perspectives.

Bryan Fuller

Martial arts is just practice. Being a geisha requires complete control.

Michelle Yeoh

Novels shouldn’t aspire to answer questions, and I wouldn’t presume to offer advice about love or marriage in any case. What’s fascinating to me about marriage as a subject for fiction—a subject that fiction has taken on with gusto since the 19th century—is how unknowable other people’s relationships are. Even the marriages of your parents, your siblings, your closest friends always remain something of a mystery. Only in fiction can you pretend to know people completely.

Nell Freudenberger

I don't want to write poems that are just really clear about how I'm aware of all the traps involved in writing poetry; I don't want to write fiction that's about the irresponsibility of writing fiction and I've thrown out a lot of writing that I think was ultimately tainted by that kind of self-awareness.

Ben Lerner

I really love Japan, and I liked living there very much, and there are so many terrific things about Japan. However, I do think what's amazing is that Japan really prides itself on being monoracial. It doesn't have the same kind of idea as in the U.K. or Canada or the United States, in which the idea of diversity is a strength.