I never seek to defeat the man I am fighting," he explained. "I seek to defeat his confidence. A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course to victory. Two men are equals - true equals - only when they both have equal confidence.

— Arthur Golden

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.

— Arthur Golden

It’s less a matter of looking the other way than of closing our eyes to what we can’t stop from happening.

— Arthur Golden

I went back to those graves not long afterward and found as I stood there that sadness was a very heavy thing. My body weighed twice what it had only a moment earlier, as if those graves were pulling me down toward them.

— Arthur Golden

I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.

— Arthur Golden

I would've had an easier time if my emotions had all pulled me in the same direction, but it wasn't so simple. I'd been blown about like a scrap of paper in the wind.

— Arthur Golden

My tears simply broke through the fragile wall that had held them, and with a terrible feeling of shame, I laid my head upon the table and let them drain out of me.

— Arthur Golden

Of course, a sign doesn't mean anything unless you know how to interpret it.

— Arthur Golden

Oh, I'm sure you're right," Auntie said. "Probably she's just as you say. But she looks to me like a very clever girl, and adaptable; you can see that from the shape of her ears.

— Arthur Golden

Once when I was a little child of six or so, I watched a spider spinning its web in a corner of the house. Before the spider had even finished its job, a mosquito flew right into the web and was trapped there. The spider didn't pay it any attention at first, but went on with what it was doing; only when it was finished did it creep over on its pointy toes and sting that poor mosquito to death. As I sat there on that wooden floor and watched Matsumoto come reaching for me with her delicate fingers, I knew I was trapped in a web she had spun for me.

— Arthur Golden