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2deeede
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If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.
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woman
love
memoirs
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Arthur Golden |
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685284f
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It was what we Japanese called the onion life, peeling away a layer at a time and crying all the while.
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memoirs
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Arthur Golden |
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bac9850
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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
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geisha
memoirs
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Arthur Golden |
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cd00c9c
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I am often described to my irritation as a 'contrarian' and even had the title inflicted on me by the publisher of one of my early books. (At least on that occasion I lived up to the title by ridiculing the word in my introduction to the book's first chapter.) It is actually a pity that our culture doesn't have a good vernacular word for an oppositionist or even for someone who tries to do his own thinking: the word 'dissident' can't be self-conferred because it is really a title of honor that has to be won or earned, while terms like 'gadfly' or 'maverick' are somehow trivial and condescending as well as over-full of self-regard. And I've lost count of the number of memoirs by old comrades or ex-comrades that have titles like 'Against the Stream,' 'Against the Current,' 'Minority of One,' 'Breaking Ranks' and so forth--all of them lending point to Harold Rosenberg's withering remark about 'the herd of independent minds.' Even when I was quite young I disliked being called a 'rebel': it seemed to make the patronizing suggestion that 'questioning authority' was part of a 'phase' through which I would naturally go. On the contrary, I was a relatively well-behaved and well-mannered boy, and chose my battles with some deliberation rather than just thinking with my hormones.
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rebellion
words
independence
youth
contrarianism
dissidents
harold-rosenberg
honorifics
hormones
oppositionism
memoirs
free-thought
dissent
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Christopher Hitchens |
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327ecd9
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For a moment, or a second, the pinched expressions of the cynical, world-weary, throat-cutting, miserable bastards we've all had to become disappears, when we're confronted with something as simple as a plate of food.
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humor
memoirs
food
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Anthony Bourdain |
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5ff3feb
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"Sister, why do you do that?" "Do what?" "Cage the animals at night?" "Well..." She looked up and out through the barred window before answering me."We don't want to, Jennings, but we have to. You see, the animals that are given to us we have to take care of. If we didn't cage them up in one place, we might lose them, they might get hurt or damaged. It's not the best thing, but it's the only way we have to take care of them." "But if somebody loved one them," I asked, "wouldn't it be a good idea to let them have one? To keep, I mean?" "Yes, it would be. But not everyone would love them and take care of them as you would. I wish I could give them all away tomorrow." She looked at me. There were tears in her eyes. "But I can't. My heart would break if I saw just one of those animals lying by the wayside uncared for, unloved. No, Jennings. It's better if we keep them together." --
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youth
family
stuffed-animals
foster-care
runaway
memoirs
nun
neglect
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Jennings Michael Burch |
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0dce06b
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We're not made to wallow in pleasure. Pleasure is joy's assassin.
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memoirs
memoir
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Mary Karr |
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b4d576d
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I'm not sure this will make sense to you but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction so that I no longer faced backward toward the past but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would the future be
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geisha
memoirs
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Arthur Golden |
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0a8d036
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I knew even then that she was right. 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. Nobu's touch had made a deeper impression on me than most. 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. But could it really be that of all the lessons I'd learned, the hardest one lay just ahead of me? Would I really have to take each of my hopes and put them away where no one would ever see them again, where not even I would ever see them?
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hopes
destiny
memoirs-of-a-geisha
geisha
clay
impression
memoirs
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Arthur Golden |
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c155797
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"Oh I'm sure you're right," Auntie said. "Probably she's just as you say. But she looks to me like a very clever girl, and adaptable; you can see that from the shape of her ears."
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fiction
geisha
memoirs
japan
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Arthur Golden |
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92f9d33
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Joy, it is, which I've never known before, only pleasure or excitement. Joy is a different thing, because its focus exists outside the self - delight in something external, not satisfaction of some inner craving.
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memoirs
memoir
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Mary Karr |
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70f0a5e
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Tomorrow! How sweet its prospects for a drunkard the night before. There is no better word. Before the earth hurls itself into sunshine, nothing is not possible.
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memoirs
memoir
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Mary Karr |
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297700d
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The head can travel a far piece while the body sits in one spot. It can traverse many decades, and many conversations can be had, even with the dead.
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memoirs
memoir
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Mary Karr |
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fe6b625
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Children played guessing games, telling each other whether the gun fired was and AK-47, a G3, an RPG, or a machine gun.
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coming-of-age
memoirs
sierra-leone
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Ishmael Beah |
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e6f8d11
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It's hard to be an articulate ghost.
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memoirs
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Mary Karr |
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c7a4fb7
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This country makes a man younger than his birthdays.
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richard-proenneke
memoirs
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Sam Keith |
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20f1ba2
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"Progresivamente me aficione a las peliculas, me converti en espectador asiduo y ahora pienso que la sala de un cinematografo es el lugar que yo elegiria para esperar el fin del mundo. Me enamore, simultanea o sucesivamente, de las actrices de cine Louise Brooks, Marie Prevost, Dorothy Mackay, Marion Davis, Evelyn Brent y Anna May Wong. De estos amores imposibles, el que tuve por Louise Brooks fue el mas v ivo, el mas desdichado. !Me disgustaba tanto creer que nunca la conosceria! Peor aun, que nunca volveria a verla. Esto, precisamente, fue lo que sucedio. Despuesde tres o cuatros peliculas, en que la vi embeselado, Louise Brooks desaparecio de las pantallas de Buenos Aires. Senti esa desaparicion, primero, como un desgarriamento; despues, como una derrota personal. Debia admitir que si Louise Brooks hubiera gustado al publico, no hubiera desaparecido. La verdad (o lo que yo sentia) es que no solo paso inadvertida por el gran publico, sino tambien por las personas que yo conocia. Si concedian que era linda - mas bien 'bonitilla' - , lamentaban que fuera mala actriz; si encontraban que era una actriz inteligente, lamentaban que no fuera mas bella. Como ante la derrota de Firpo, comprobe que la realidad y yo no estabamos de acuerdo.
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memoirs
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Adolfo Bioy Casares |
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b16a940
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Slurping these spirits is soul preparation, a warped communion, myself serving as god, priest, and congregation.
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memoirs
memoir
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Mary Karr |
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e08b7da
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The usual pronouncement that Truman Capote is a 'birdbrain.' Gore [Vidal] has finished a novel called Two Sisters in which he admits that he and Jack Kerouac went to bed together--or was that in an article? (Gore told me about so many articles he's written and talks he has given that my memory spins.) Anyhow, Gore now regrets that he didn't describe the act itself; how they got very drunk and Kerouac said, 'Why don't we take a shower?' and then tried to go down on him but did it very badly, and then they belly rubbed. Next day, Kerouac claimed he remembered nothing; but later, in a bar, yelled out, 'I've blown Gore Vidal!
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gay-authors
memoirs
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Christopher Isherwood |
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87b4496
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Mr. Pilates was a bully and a narcissist and a dirty old man; he and Christopher got along very well. When Christopher was doing his workout, Pilates would bring one of his assistants over to watch, rather as the house surgeon brings an intern to study a patient with a rare deformity. 'Look at him!' Pilates would exclaim to the assistant, 'That could have been a beautiful body, and look what he's done to it! Like a birdcage that somebody trod on!' Pilates had grown tubby with age, but he would never admit it; he still thought himself a magnificent figure of a man. 'That's not fat,' he declared, punching himself in the stomach, 'that's good healthy meat!' He frankly lusted after some of his girl students. He used to make them lie back on an inclined board and climb on top of them, on the pretext that he was showing them an exercise. What he really was doing was rubbing off against them through his clothes; as was obvious from the violent jerking of his buttocks.
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memoirs
gossip
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Christopher Isherwood |