Can't you see? Every step I have taken, since I was that child on the bridge, has been to bring myself closer to you.

— Arthur Golden

Couldn't the wrong sort of living turn anyone mean? I remembered very well that one day back in Corrido, a boy pushed me into a thorn bush near the pond. By the time I clawed my way out I was mad enough to bite through wood. If a few minutes of suffering could make me so angry, what would years of it do? Even stone can be worn down with enough rain.

— Arthur Golden

Even now that he is gone I have him still, in the richness of my memories. I've lived my life again just telling it to you.

— Arthur Golden

Finally, the homeless eel marked its territory, I suppose, and the Doctor lay heavily upon me, moist with sweat.

— Arthur Golden

Flowers that grow where old ones have withered serve to remind us that death will one day come to us all.

— Arthur Golden

For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness-- a world in which fathers didn't sell their daughters.

— Arthur Golden

Friendship is a precious thing, Saudi. One mustn't throw it away.

— Arthur Golden

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. But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of it.

— Arthur Golden

Here's the thing: this eel spends its entire life trying to find a home, and what do you think women have inside them? Caves, where the eels like to live...when they find a cave they like, the wriggle around inside it for a while to be sure that...well, to be sure it's a nice cave, I suppose. And when they've made up their minds that it's comfortable, they mark the cave as their territory...by spitting.

— Arthur Golden

He stood with his two frail hands on his cane and his eyes closed, and breathed in deeply the scent of the past. "Sometimes," he sighed, "I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see.

— Arthur Golden