Literary Birthday – 6 December – Arthur Golden

Happy Birthday, Arthur Golden, born 6 December 1956.

Seven Quotes

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. This time all the historical details and things were right. But I’d written it again in third person, and people found it dry. I decided to throw that one away.
4. At the temple there is a poem called ‘Loss’ carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.
5. 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.
6. We can never flee the misery that is within us.
7. I don’t think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.

Arthur Golden is an American writer. He is the author of the best-selling novel Memoirs of a Geisha.

 by Amanda Patterson

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