Memorable Quotes from Memoirs of A Geisha

The thing that I love most about books is how inspiring they are. Authors have the amazing gift of turning simple words into inspiration and that was definitely no different with Memoirs of A Geisha. In fact, I think Memoirs had even a bigger inspiration impact because of the poetic language that was used. Like most foreign languages, the Japanese language is very poetic and not as straight forward as American English. Anyway, here are a few of my favorite quotes from Memoirs of A Geisha by Arthur Golden

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"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 finda new course."


"I'd never understood how closely things are connected to one another. And it isn't just the zodiac I'm talking about. We human beings are only a part of something very much larger. When we walk along, we may crush a beetle or simply cause a change in the air so that a fly ends up where it might never have gone otherwise.. And if we think of the same example but with ourselves in the role of the insect and the larger universe in the role we've just played, it's perfectly clear that we're affected every day by forces over which we have no more control than the poor beetle has over our gigantic foot as it descends upon it. What are we to do? 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."


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


"Every man has his destiny. But who needs to go to a fortune-teller to find it? Do I go to a chef to find out if I'm hungry?"


"I had to wonder if men were so blinded by beauty that they would feel privileged to live their lives with an actual demon, so long as it was a beautiful demon."


"It goes without saying that men can be as distinct from each other as shrubs that bloom in different times of the year."


"When a man takes a mistress, he doesn't turn around and divorce his wife."


"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."


"Neither you nor I can know your destiny. You may never know it! Destiny isn't always like a party at the end of the evening. Sometimes it's nothing more than struggling through life from day to day."


"An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them."


"No one could tell me whether he would be my ultimate destiny, but I had always sensed the en between us. Somewhere in the landscape of my life Nobu would always be present."


"I don't know when we will 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."


"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 realized 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."


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


"Since the day I'd left Yoroido, I'd done nothing but worry that every turn of life's wheel would bring yet another obstacle into my path; and of course, it was the worrying and the struggle that had always made life so vividly real to me. When we fight upstream against a rocky undercurrent, every foothold takes on a kind of urgency."


"How curious it is, what the future brings us. You must take care, Sayuri, never to expect too much."

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I've finally decided that the next book I will be reading is Atonement by Ian McEwan. This one might be a little difficult for me because I watched the movie and I HATED it. Like really. It's on my list of worst movies ever, along with Little Black Book. 

But you know what they say; don't judge a book by it's movie!

If I'm don't update before New Years, please have a safe and fun New Years Eve! See ya next year!

-tasia