We can never flee the misery that is within us.

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.

The final causes, then, of compassion are to prevent and to relieve misery.

At some stages of your life you will deal with things and at others you are overwhelmed with misery and anxiety.

Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you've made is worth the misery of having to review it.

Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every stage of human history than any other single idea.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

The rare pleasure of being seen for what one is, compensates for the misery of being it.

Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain.

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.

By adversity are wrought the greatest works of admiration, and all the fair examples of renown, out of distress and misery are grown.

He gave to misery (all he had) a tear.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

If misery loves company, then triumph demands an audience.

I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery and death... I think... peace and tranquillity will return again.

Acting doesn't have to be threadbare misery all the time.

Evil is always devising more corrosive misery through man's restless need to exact revenge out of his hate.

Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.

People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.

Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm.

You know, the camera is not meant just to show misery.

Nearly all the powerful people of this age are unbelievers, the best of them in doubt and misery, the most in plodding hesitation, doing as well as they can, what practical work lies at hand.

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.

Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.

It's been a misery for me, living with Christine Keeler.