Memoirs of a Geisha

by Arthur Golden

His face was very heavily creased, and into each crease he had tucked some worry or other, so that it wasn’t really his own face any

longer, but more like a tree that had nests of birds in all the branches.

Was life nothing more than a storm that constantly washed away what had been there only a moment before, and left behind something barren and unrecognizable?

I would’ve had an easier time if my emotions had all pulled me in the same direction,

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.

We must use whatever methods we can to understand the movement of the universe around us and time our actions so that we are not fighting the currents, but moving with them.

At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.

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.

when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.

go through life with your eyes open!

A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course to victory.

I understood the danger of focusing only on what isn’t there.

Sometimes we get through adversity only by imagining what the world might be like if our dreams should ever come true.”

I don’t think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.

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.