Memoirs of a Geisha Quotes

“My name back then was Chiyo. I wouldn’t be known by my geisha name, Sayuri, until years later.”

“I’m sure I looked no more elegant than a guest at an inn looks wearing a robe on the way to the bath. But I’d never before worn anything nearly so glamorous on my body.”

“Only when she sits before her mirror to apply her makeup with care does she become a geisha. And I don’t mean that this is when she begins to look like one. This is when she begins to think like one too.”

“I sometimes lift the brocade cover on the mirror of my makeup stand, and have the briefest flicker of a thought that I may find her there in the glass, smirking at me.”

“Geisha never marry. Or at least those who do no longer continue as geisha.”

“For one thing, the bidding hadn’t been a contest between Dr. Crab and Nobu at all. It had ended up a contest between Dr. Crab and the Baron.”

“Even if we did survive and Mr. Tanaka adopted us, would my own family cease to exist?”

“Maybe you’re just too pretty yourself to be able to see it elsewhere.”

“Evidently in the six months since I’d last seen them, I’d changed more than I realized.”

“I’ve heard it said that the week in which a young girl prepares for her debut as an apprentice geisha is like when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly.”

“Beginning my training meant going to a school in another section of Gion to take lessons in things like music, dance, and tea ceremony. ”

“I’d earned more in the past six months than both Hatsumomo and Pumpkin combined.”

“Everyone knows how you hate Mameha,” Auntie told [Hatsumomo]. “You hate anyone more successful than you.”

“In the years since, I’ve been called beautiful more often than I can remember. Though, of course, geisha are always called beautiful, even those who aren’t. But when Mr. Tanaka said it to me, before I’d ever heard of such a thing as a geisha, I could almost believe it was true.”

“It struck me as odd that even though no one could have called her a beauty, Mr. Tanaka’s eyes were fixed on her like a rag on a hook.”

“Every time I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass of a shop, I felt I was someone to be taken seriously; not a girl anymore, but a young woman.”

“Your job is to bow as low as you can, and don’t look them in the eye.”

“Every young geisha may be proud of her hairstyle at first, but she comes to hate it within three or four days.”

“We don’t become geisha so our lives will be satisfying. We become geisha because we have no other choice.”

“Do as you’re told; don’t be too much trouble; and you might begin learning the arts of a geisha two or three months from now.”