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19e4392
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I was thanking him for...well, for something I'm not sure I can explain even now. For showing me that something besides cruelty could be found in the world, I suppose.
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Arthur Golden |
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b59c0a1
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I stumbled out into the courtyard to try to flee my misery, but of course we can never flee the misery that is within us.
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sadness
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Arthur Golden |
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cbf2a37
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Well, a peach has a lovely taste and so does a mushroom, but you can't put the two together...
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Arthur Golden |
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a11d880
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Yet somehow the thing that startled me most, after a week or two had passed, was that I had in fact survived.
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Arthur Golden |
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dd0eeb5
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Some people have difficulty telling the difference between something great and something they've simply heard of.
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Arthur Golden |
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effc875
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How many times already had I encountered the painful lesson that although we may wish for the barb to be pulled from our flesh, it leaves a welt that doesn't heal?
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Arthur Golden |
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1f7725f
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Autobiography, if there really is such a thing, is like asking a rabbit to tell us what he looks like hopping through the grasses of the field. How would he know? If we want to hear about the field on the other hand, no one is in a better circumstance to tell us-so long as we keep in mind that we are missing all those things the rabbit was in no position to observe.
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Arthur Golden |
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cfc3815
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A woman who acts like a fool is a fool.
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Arthur Golden |
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753cca0
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I've lived my life again just telling it to you.
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Arthur Golden |
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0078fcd
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Friendship is a precious thing, Sayuri. One mustn't throw it away.
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Arthur Golden |
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05f4e8a
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I went back to those graves not long afterward and found as I stood there that sadness was a very heavy thing. My body weighed twice what it had only a moment earlier, as if those graves were pulling me down toward them.
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sadness
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Arthur Golden |
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7362575
|
Seeing him again after so long awakened something inside me. I was surprised to find myself feeling sad rather than joyful, as I would have imagined.
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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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f3ea055
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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.
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pain
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Arthur Golden |
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5e94e8a
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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 that future be? The moment this question formed in my mind, I knew with as much certainty as I'd ever known anything that sometime during that day I would receive a sign. This was why the b..
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Arthur Golden |
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2956e41
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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.
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Arthur Golden |
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4c5449c
|
I began to feel that all the people I'd ever known who had died or left me had not in fact gone away, but continued to live on inside me just as this man's wife lived on inside him.
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Arthur Golden |
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ebb0c67
|
Nothing in life is ever as simple as we imagine.
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Arthur Golden |
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8ebf8b0
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You seemed so desperate, like you might drown if someone didn't save you.
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Arthur Golden |
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41ee8aa
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A wounded tiger is a dangerous beast.
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Arthur Golden |
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2c5c796
|
Here's the thing: this eel spends its entire life trying to find a home, and what do you think women have inside them? Caves, where the eels like to live...when they find a cave they like, the wriggle around inside it for a while to be sure that...well, to be sure it's a nice cave, I suppose. And when they've made up their minds that it's comfortable, they mark the cave as their territory...by spitting.
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sex
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Arthur Golden |
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5670c0c
|
When we fight upstream against a rocky undercurrent, every foothold takes on a kind of urgency.
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Arthur Golden |
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961a470
|
All at once I felt so vain, like a girl posturing for the crowds as she walks along, only to discover the street is empty.
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Arthur Golden |
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cf468a4
|
His face was very heavily creased, and into each crease he had tucked some worry or other, so that it wasn't really his face any longer, but more like a tree that had nests of birds in all of the branches. He had to struggle constantly to manage it and always looked worn out from the effort.
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Arthur Golden |
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1244fbf
|
We human beings have a remarkable way of growing accustomed to things.
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Arthur Golden |
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1e74c98
|
I didn't say to act dead. I said act helpless.
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Arthur Golden |
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442607f
|
When a man takes a mistress, he doesn't turn around and divorce his wife.
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men
mistress
wife
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Arthur Golden |
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54d77df
|
Couldn't the wrong sort of living turn anyone mean? I remembered very well that one day back in Yoroido, a boy pushed me into a thorn bush near the pond. By the time I clawed my way out I was mad enough to bite through wood. If a few minutes of suffering could make me so angry, what would years of it do? Even stone can be worn down with enough rain.
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suffering
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Arthur Golden |
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605175d
|
Nothing like work for getting over a disappointment.
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Arthur Golden |
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7e51e2d
|
What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realized I'd never really tasted to things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been. What life would I have? I would be like the dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.
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Arthur Golden |
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1e62814
|
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.
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Arthur Golden |
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3c323ae
|
A geisha has studied a man's moods and his seasons. She fusses and he blooms.
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Arthur Golden |
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f140953
|
I fell into a sound sleep and dreamed that I was at a banquet back in Gion, talking with an elderly man who was explaining to me that his wife, whom he'd cared for deeply, wasn't really dead because the pleasure of their time together lived on inside him.
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Arthur Golden |
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c74a442
|
To the eyes of the American soldiers who drove past, I looked no different from the women around me; and as I thought of it, who could say I was any different? If you no longer have leaves, or bark, or roots, can you go on calling yourself a tree? "I am a peasant," I said to myself, "and not a geisha at all any longer." It was a frightening feeling to look at my hands and see their roughness. To draw my mind away from my fears, I turned my ..
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war
|
Arthur Golden |
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9dbcb6c
|
Geisha is always called beautiful even if she is not.
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Arthur Golden |
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3509d91
|
Here you are...A beautiful girl with nothing to be ashamed of...And yet you are afraid to look at me. Someone has been cruel to you...Or perhaps life has been cruel. "I don't know sir" I said, Though of course I knew perfectly well."
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Arthur Golden |
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ff5a35b
|
I cannot tell you what it is that guides us in this life; but for me, I fell toward the Chairman just as a stone must fall toward the earth. When I cut my lip and met Mr. Tanaka, when my mother died and I was cruelly sold, it was all like a stream that falls over rocky cliffs before it can reach the ocean. Even now that he is gone I have him still, in the richness of my memories.
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life-lessons
|
Arthur Golden |
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dd016b3
|
We all know that a winter scene, though it may be covered over one day, with even the trees dressed in shawls of snow, will be unrecognizable the following spring. Yet I never imagined such a thing could occur within our very selves.
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Arthur Golden |
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24fc844
|
Water never waits. It changes shape and floes around things, and finds the secret paths no one else 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 can sweep it away. Even wood, which is its natural complement, can'survive without being nurtured by water.
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Arthur Golden |
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f4eb165
|
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.
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Arthur Golden |
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af55ed6
|
I tried to continue, but somehow my throat made up its mind to swallow - though I can't think what I was swallowing, unless it was a little knot of emotion I pushed back down because there was no room in my face for any more.
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Arthur Golden |
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7b797c3
|
If he couldn't forgive you for what you'd done, it was clear to me he was never truly your destiny.
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|
love
forgiveness
|
Arthur Golden |
|
7d80075
|
My feelings of disgust had been so loud within me, they'd nearly drowned out everything else.
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Arthur Golden |
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9ce70af
|
I expect you to go through life with your eyes open! If you keep your destiny in mind, every moment in life becomes an opportunity for moving closer to it.
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Arthur Golden |