Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.

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

I worried she might spend an afternoon chatting with me about the sights and then wish me best of luck.

I don't like things held up before me that I cannot have.

We can never flee the misery that is within us.

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.

What I had to do was keep the story within certain limits of what was, of course, plausible.

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.

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

Never give up; for even rivers someday wash dams away.

Passion can quickly slip to jealousy, or even hatred.

You know, the men go to tea houses with the expectation that they will have a nice quiet evening and not read about it the next morning in the newspaper.

What I really wanted to know, though, was what it was like to be a geisha? Where do you sleep? What do you eat? How do you have your hair done?

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.

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.

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.

Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.

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.

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.

Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.

A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course to victory.

I stumbled out into the courtyard to try to flee my misery, but of course we can never flee the misery that is within us.

A mouse who wishes to fool the cat doesn't simply scamper out of its hole whenever it feels the slightest urge.

Even stone can be worn down with enough rain.

The swan who goes on living in its parents' tree will die; this is why those who are beautiful and talented bear the burden of finding their own way in the world.

A wounded tiger is a dangerous beast.

I've got more junk in the trunk than most 5-foot-1 blonde girls, and I like it.

I wouldn't like to see a chick of mine taking her clothes off and kissing a fellow on screen. And my girls must get very hurt when they see me doing it.

It was pretty extensive - we worked out 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 3 months, which I think is more than anybody in the Olympics. I thought well I don't need this, the girls need it, but it was a gift.

We show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available.

I still have horrible luck with girls.

Every time the guys were knocked out by my guitar playing and the girls were knocked out by the type of songs I did. That set us apart from the average blues band.

I miss Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, not shaving, getting into my car with my girls, driving to the supermarket, squeezing the fruit, getting my car washed, taking walks.

I don't like going to the mall. I'm not really like the other girls. I just like to go out on the golf course and play. Golf is fun and feels really good.

If a man works like a horse for his money, there are a lot of girls anxious to take him down the bridal path.

My purpose... to go on with my heart and soul, devoting all my energies to Girl Scouts, and heart and hand with them, we will make our lives and the lives of the future girls happy, healthy and holy.

When I was a kid, the idea of why I wanted acting to be the thing I do for the rest of my life was different. It was, Oh yeah, I'll get girls and be famous.

In my dreams, I could be a Princess, and that's what I was. Like most little girls, I believed nothing less than a Prince could make my dreams come true.

One of the biggest development issues in the world is the education of girls. In the United States and Europe, it has been accepted, but not in Africa and the developing countries.

Dancing is a wonderful training for girls, it's the first way you learn to guess what a man is going to do before he does it.

When I first started editing GQ, it gave the impression of being, and in fact was, a gay magazine. There were female models in it and there were women on the cover, but the boys were always much, much more beautiful than the girls.

One's prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to the full.

For the past few years, I was the more visible Asian performer, and I think it gave young girls a kind of role model showing it's possible to actually reach success doing movies.

It took a brave editor in the U.S. to sign a contract for Dancing Girls, and without her belief in the book, I'm not sure it would ever have found its way into print.

Girls like to be played with, and rumpled a little too, sometimes.

I wanna record these girls individually. And then, I wanna cut a blues album on me. But all of it, original stuff, you know. When I listen to the blues today, it's like they all sounds similar. I wanna do something different, to try to add to the blues flavor.

I beg you to look at the promising boys and beautiful girls in your homes and in your communities, and then you will not put these temptations in their way.

A number of girls of my acquaintance went to school to the nuns of the Congregational Nunnery, or Sisters of Charity, as they are sometimes called.

If I had girls to educate I would not have them learn both music and drawing.