Memoirs of a Geisha

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.

A memoir provides a record not so much of the memoirist as of the memoirist’s world.

It’s time you were; a geisha must be very careful about the image she presents to the world

little drum we call tsutsumi,

e “gei” of “geisha” means “arts,” so the word “geisha” really means “artisan” or “artist.

If a few minutes of suffering could make me so angry, what would years of it do? Even stone can be worn down with enough rain.

With all this water and all this wood, the two of them ought to have made a good balance and produced children with the proper arrangement of elements.

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?

Life will be miserable for the lucky ones. The rest won’t even live to see the end of the war.

the pace of change never slows, even when we’ve convinced ourselves it will.