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

And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped around my body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty. At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.

If those sorts of moments would be the only pleasure life offered me, I'd be better off shutting out that one brilliant source of light to let my eyes begin to adjust to the darkness.

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.

Nothing in life is ever as simple as we imagine.

By the time we arrived, as evening was approaching, I felt as sore as a rock must feel when the waterfall has pounded on it all day long.

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