Geisha Quotes

We none of us find as much kindness in this world as we should.

Water is powerful. It can wash away earth, put out fire, and even destroy iron.

I don't like things held up before me that I cannot have.

Waiting patiently doesn't suit you. I can see you have a great deal of water in your personality. Water never waits. It changes shape and flows around things, and finds the secret paths no one else has thought about. [Mameha]

I was really interested in geishas' work, and wanted to meet real geishas.

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.

My mother once told me I was like water. Water can carve its way even through stone. And when trapped, water makes a new path.

It was what we Japanese called the onion life, peeling away a layer at a time and crying all the while.

For myself I don't like the geisha look. It's like a mask.

If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.

I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.

The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.

Geisha is always called beautiful even if she is not.

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.

A geisha has studied a man's moods and his seasons. She fusses and he blooms.

We don't become geisha because we want our lives to be happy; we become geisha because we have no choice.

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

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.

He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.

Geisha because when I was living in Japan, I met a fellow whose mother was a geisha, and I thought that was kind of fascinating and ended up reading about the subject just about the same time I was getting interested in writing fiction.

I have been presented with roles with demand not just a physical ability but mental disciplines as well. 'Memoirs of a Geisha' was not so much about physical exertion...it was much more graceful and contained than that.

Every girl in the world should have geisha training

The flat shoe makes the woman equal of men. When they have high [shoes], they play a part like a geisha, and they can't be expected to be taken that seriously.

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

She paints her face to hide her face. Her eyes are deep water. It is not for Geisha to want. It is not for geisha to feel. Geisha is an artist of the floating world. She dances, she sings. She entertains you, whatever you want. The rest is shadows, the rest is secret.

This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely.

From my opinion, 'geisha' means a woman skilled in the arts. Like dancing, singing and playing musical instruments.

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.

There's nothing in Chinese culture that is an equivalent of the geisha. It's so different, so special to Japan.

The first rule that a geisha is taught, at the age of nine, is to be charming to other women...Every girl in the world should have geisha training.

From this experience, I understood the danger of focusing only on what isn't there. What if I came to the end of my life and realized that I'd spent every day watching for a man who would never come to me? What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realize I'd never really tasted the things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been, because I'd thought of nothing but the Chairman even while my life was drifting away from me. And yet if I drew my thoughts back from him, what life would I have? I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.

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

I studied Japanese language and culture in college and graduate school, and afterward went to work in Tokyo, where I met a young man whose father was a famous businessman and whose mother was a geisha. He and I never discussed his parentage, which was an open secret, but it fascinated me.

Can't you see? Every step I have taken, since I was that child on the bridge, has been to bring myself closer to you.

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.

I can see you have a great deal of water in your personality. Water never waits. It changes shape and flows around things, and finds the secret paths no one else has thought about - the tiny hole through the roof or the bottom of a box. There's no doubt it's the most versatile of the five elements. It can wash away earth; it can put out fire, it can wear a piece of metal down and sweep it away. Even wood, which is its natural complement, can't survive without being nurtured by water And yet, you haven't drawn on those strengths in living your life, have you?

This and the small sample size inevitably leads to stereotypes - sweeping family sagas from India, 'lush' colonial romances from South-East Asia. Mother and daughter reconciling generational differences through preparing a 'traditional' meal together. Geishas. And even if something more exciting does manage to sneak through, it gets the same insultingly clichéd cover slapped on it anyway, so no one will ever know.

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.

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.

Singletons should not have to explain themselves all the time but should have an accepted status — like geisha girls do

I think the silhouette of the kimono costume will become engraved in people's minds. I do think there'll be lots of red accents in the near future. For me personally, I can't see myself flaunting around in a geisha uniform but it'll make me smile when I see what others do with it.