Geisha Quotes

“We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“It was what we Japanese called the onion life, peeling away a layer at a time and crying all the while.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“A tree may look as beautiful as ever; but when you notice the insects infesting it, and the tips of the branches that are brown from disease, even the trunk seems to lose some of its magnificence. ”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Perhaps it seems odd that a casual meeting on the street could have brought about such change. But sometimes life is like that isn't it”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“When someone who's starved of love is shown something that looks like sincere affection, is it any wonder that she jumps at it and clings to it?”
― Sayo Masuda, Autobiography of a Geisha

“I was performing my ritual of sipping tea, shooting flirtatious glances and planning murder”
― Mingmei Yip, Peach Blossom Pavilion

“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

“I'm not sure this will make sense to you but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction so that I no longer faced backward toward the past but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would the future be”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“What a lovely place this world would be if only people would feel affection for everyone else, and all the ugliness of the human heart were to vanish - our envy of those better off than ourselves and our scorn for those worse off.”
― Sayo Masuda, Autobiography of a Geisha

“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, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Being in love isn't the only way of loving. I realized with all my being that if you loved somebody- it didn't matter who it was- and dedicated yourself to bringing joy to your loved one, you, too, would be redeemed.”
― Sayo Masuda

“I knew even then that she was right. An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them. Nobu's touch had made a deeper impression on me than most. No one could tell me whether he would be my ultimate destiny, but I had always sensed the en between us. Somewhere in the landscape of my life Nobu would always be present. But could it really be that of all the lessons I'd learned, the hardest one lay just ahead of me? Would I really have to take each of my hopes and put them away where no one would ever see them again, where not even I would ever see them?”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“And yet if I drew my thoughts back from him, what life would I have? I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.”
― Arthur Golden

“In the moonlight the fine geishalike skin took on the luster of a seashell.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country

“When I was a nursemaid at the home of the landowners, a nun who happened to pass once gave me something square and white.Timidly I licked it and discovered that it was sweet and delicious. I realize now that it must have been a sugar cube;but still, more than twenty years later, I remember clearly the joy I felt then. It's not just children; everyone seems to be deeply touched by unexpected joy brought to them by others and is unable to forget it.
That child will be grown up by now, and if he hasn't forgotten me, whenever he sees a crying child he'll want to say a kind word and wipe the kid's nose. And when that kid grows up, he'll do the same. To do something kind for another is never a bad feeling; it fosters a spirit of caring for other people. And who knows,after a hundrend years, human beings may even learn to cooperate with one another...Yes, that was it: I'd try to teach children that if they felt glad when someone gave them a single piece of candy,then they in turn should give to others.”
― Sayo Masuda

“I was hardly worthy of these surroundings.
And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped about my
body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty. At that moment, beauty
itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“The war ended for us in August of 1945. Most anyone who lived in Japan during this time will tell you that it was the very bleakest moment in a long night of darkness. Our country wasn't simply defeated, it was destroyed and I don't mean by all the bombs, as horrible as those were. When your country has lost a war and an invading army pours in, you feel as though you yourself have been led to the execution ground to kneel, hands bound, and wait for the sword to fall. During a period of a year or more, I never once heard the sound of laughter unless it was little Juntaro, who didn't know any better. And when Juntaro laughed, his grandfather waved a hand to shush him. I've often observed that men and women who were young children during these years have a certain seriousness about them; there was too little laughter in their childhoods.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“[...] we drank each other up with so much yearning and need that afterward I felt myself drained of all the things the Chairman had taken from me, and yet filled with all that I had taken from him.”
― Arthur Golden

“I was hardly worthy of these surroundings. And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped about my body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty. At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“El conocimiento pasa de la maestra a la estudiante mediante un proceso denominado mane. Aunque este término se traduce a menudo por "imitación", el aprendizaje de la danza va más allá de la simple copia y exige una profunda identificación. Repetimos los movimientos de la profesora hasta que somos capaces de reproducirlos con exactitud o hasta que, en cierto modo, nos hemos impregnado de su maestría. Si deseamos expresar lo que hay en nuestros corazones, la técnica artística debe incorporarse por completo a las células de nuestro cuerpo, algo que requiere muchos años de práctica.”
― Mineko Iwasaki

“Le geishe erano danzatrici, musiciste e conversatrici che occupavano una specifica nicchia nei massimi livelli della società nipponica. Non erano assolutamente prostitute, né di alto né di basso bordo.”
― Lesley Downer

“Quali siano stati i nostri conflitti e i nostri trionfi, per quanto indelebile sia il segno che questi abbiano potuto lasciare su di noi, finiscono sempre per stemperarsi come una tinta ad acquerello su un foglio di carta.”
― Arthur Golden

“Al tempio c'è una poesia intitolata "la mancanza", incisa nella pietra. Ci sono 3 parole, ma il poeta le ha cancellate. Non si può leggere la mancanza, solo avvertirla.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Since moving to New York I’ve learned what the word “geisha” really means to most Westerners. From time to time at elegant parties, I've been introduced to some young woman or other in a splendid dress and jewelry. When she learns I was once a geisha in Kyoto, she forms her mouth into a sort of smile, although the corners don’t turn up quite as they should… This woman is thinking, “My goodness. I'm talking with a prostitute.” A moment later she's rescued by her escort, a wealthy man a good thirty or forty years older than she is. Well, I often find myself wondering why she can't sense how much we really have in common. She is a kept woman, you see, and in my day, so was I.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“But really, would Yoroido seem any less exotic if I went back there again? As a young girl I believed my life would never have been a struggle if Mr. Tanaka hadn't torn me away from my tipsy house. But now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Aku tertidur nyenyak dan bermimpi aku sedang berada dalam bangket di Gion, bicara dengan seorang laki-laki tua yang menjelaskan kepadaku bahwa istrinya, yang dicintainya dengan amat mendalam, tidak benar-benar meninggal karena kenikmatan saat mereka bersama-sama masih hidup di dalam dirinya.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha: Portrait of the Film

“Sekarang aku tahu bahwa dunia kita sama tidak permanennya dengan ombak yang timbul di lautan. Apapun perjuangan dan kemenangan kita, betapapun kita menderita karenanya, segera saja semuanya akan merembes menyatu, seperti tinta yang tumpah ke kertas.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“At home, sleeping," said Kurota, unfazed. "She was a magazine editor until we got married. Then she said, 'I can't be bothered to work anymore.' That's the way it is with Japanese wives. She stays home, has children, and brings them up. Her world is very narrow - the PTA and the parents of our children's friends; that's about it. I go out and enjoy myself, then get home late and wake her up and she gets angry. She says, 'Why did you wake me up?' and goes back to sleep. In the West, people go to the pub for a drink, then go home, get changed, and go out with their wives. But we Japanese can't do that, our homes are too far away. "That's why we have geisha," said his friend, butting in. "Ordinary girls are good at having babies and bringing up children. But geisha are good at chatting. You see old geisha here ...”
― Lesley Downer, Women of the Pleasure Quarters: The Secret History of the Geisha

“One summer evening during the fourth year of his search Seikichi happened to be passing the Hirasei Restaurant in the Fukagawa district of Edo, not far from his own house, when he noticed a woman’s bare milk-white foot peeping out beneath the curtains of a departing palanquin. To his sharp eye, a human foot was as expressive as a face. This one was sheer perfection. Exquisitely chiseled toes, nails like the iridescent shells along the shore at Enoshima, a pearl-like rounded heel, skin so lustrous that it seemed bathed in the limpid waters of a mountain spring — this, indeed, was a foot to be nourished by men’s blood, a foot to trample on their bodies.”
― Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, The Tattooer