#geisha

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. ↗

— Arthur Golden

#because #ended #fascinating #fellow #fiction

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 the 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? ↗

— Arthur Golden

#change

What a lovely place this world would be if only people would feel affection for everyone else, and all the ugliness of the human heart were to vanish - our envy of those better off than ourselves and our scorn for those worse off. ↗

— Sayo Masuda

#heart #humanity #inspiration #love #world

Being in love isn't the only way of loving. I realized with all my being that if you loved somebody- it didn't matter who it was- and dedicated yourself to bringing joy to your loved one, you, too, would be redeemed. ↗

— Sayo Masuda

#geisha #inspirational #love #inspirational

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

— Ziyi Zhang

#chinese culture #culture #different #equivalent #geisha

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. ↗

— Arthur Golden

#beauty

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

— Arthur Golden

#beauty #melancholy #memoirs-of-a-geisha #beauty

Perhaps it seems odd that a casual meeting on the street could have brought about such change. But sometimes life is like that isn't it ↗

— Arthur Golden

#geisha #memoirs #change

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

— Arthur Golden

#memoirs #life

When someone who's starved of love is shown something that looks like sincere affection, is it any wonder that she jumps at it and clings to it? ↗

— Sayo Masuda

#geisha #heart-broken #japan #love #masuda