Memoirs of a Geisha

by Arthur Golden

Occasionally in life we come upon things we can’t understand because we have never seen anything similar.

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 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.”

Adversity is like a strong wind. I don’t mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.

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.

As a younger woman I believed that passion must surely fade with age, just as a cup left standing in a room will gradually give up its contents to the air.

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.