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

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.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I still have horrible luck with girls.

How is it the great pieces of good luck fall to us?

With a little bit of luck, you'll never work!

The greatest luck that I've had has been the ability to find men and women who came into my administration who worked with me and brought extraordinary talents that we were able to take full advantage of.

So, it takes a lot of chance and luck. I mean I was lucky enough to get in the program where people with the same skills never made it to the program. So keep trying.

Be grateful for luck. Pay the thunder no mind - listen to the birds. And don't hate nobody.

Whoever has the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. Because a character will never die! A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die!

I feel I'd like to share my luck and my life. Being in love is the best thing in the world.

Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.

I used to annoy my father by telling him how much I felt luck was with me.

People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.

I have a musical called Goodbye and Good Luck, based on a Grace Paley short story. I also have King Island Christmas, and there are 20 different productions of it this year.

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.

The deepest thing in any one is the conviction of the bad luck that follows boasting.

Care and diligence bring luck.

So it's probably eighty percent luck and twenty percent skill.

The people have spoken. Their decision is sovereign. We all respect it... I wish good luck to those who will now govern France.

I agree with Sophocles: the greatest luck is not to have been born - but, as the joke goes on, very few people succeed in it.

Luck's always to blame.

I had the luck that my parents educated me in three languages. With my mother I spoke Dutch, with my father Italian, and in the school I learned German. But my host language is Italian.

It was depressing, very depressing. I worried about how I would make a living. I didn't want to stay on the farm. It didn't offer the challenge I wanted and yet, without a college education, I felt that I was really out of luck.

The meeting of preparation with opportunity generates the offspring we call luck.