Memoirs of a Geisha Quotes
At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.
The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.
This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely.
He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.
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.
I don't know when we'll see each other again or what the world will be like when we do. We may both have seen many horrible things. But I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.
I dont think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.
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.
I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see.
If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.
I had to wonder if men were so blinded by beauty that they would feel privileged to live their lives with an actual demon, so long as it was a beautiful demon
Sometimes we get through adversity only by imagining what the world might be like if our dreams should ever come true.
Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.
Now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean.
If a few minutes of suffering could make me so angry, what would years of it do? Even a stone can be worn down with enough rain.
A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course to victory.
Water is powerful. It can wash away earth, put out fire, and even destroy iron.
If you have experienced an evening more exciting than any in your life, you're sad to see it end; and yet you still feel grateful that it happened.
We can never flee the misery that is within us.
If you keep your destiny in mind, every moment in life becomes an opportunity for moving closer to it.
Waiting patiently doesn't suit you.
Of course, a sign doesn't mean anything unless you know how to interpret it.
We none of us find as much kindness in this world as we should.
She dances, she sings. She entertains you, whatever you want. The rest is shadows, the rest is secret.
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.
Flowers that grow where old ones have withered serve to remind us that death will one day come to us all.
Well, a peach has a lovely taste and so does a mushroom, but you can't put the two together...
Yet somehow the thing that startled me most, after a week or two had passed, was that I had in fact survived.
At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.
Nothing in life is ever as simple as we imagine.
You seemed so desperate, like you might drown if someone didn't save you.
A wounded tiger is a dangerous beast.
All at once I felt so vain, like a girl posturing for the crowds as she walks along, only to discover the street is empty.
Never give up; for even rivers someday wash dams away.
We human beings have a remarkable way of growing accustomed to things.
I didn't say to act dead. I said act helpless.
When a man takes a mistress, he doesn't turn around and divorce his wife.
Nothing is bleaker than the future, except perhaps the past.
Every step I have taken has been to bring myself closer to you.
Passion can quickly slip over into jealousy, or even hatred.