Memoirs of a Geisha

We don’t become geisha so our lives will be satisfying. We become geisha because we have no other choice.
Mameha

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Suppose that you and I were sitting in a quiet room overlooking a garden, chatting and sipping at our cups of green tea while we talked about something that had happened a long while ago, and I said to you “That afternoon when I met so-and-so . . . was the very best afternoon of my life, and also the very worst afternoon.”
[incipit]

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The sea was violent, with waves like stones chipped into blades, sharp enough to cut. It seemed to me the world itself was feeling just as I felt.

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I suppose the rich just go right on being rich, even in a time like this.
Mameha

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Grief is a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it.

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Destiny isn’t always like a party at the end of the evening. Sometimes it’s nothing more than struggling through life from day to day.
Mameha

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But she was like a teakettle that even on a good day might still scald the hand of anyone who used it.

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So I listened closely not to his words, but to the tone of his voice; because in the same way that sound rises as a bucket is emptied, I could hear the Chairman’s voice softening as he spoke.

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I’ve lived my life again just telling it to you.

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Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden