My goodness, Sayuri, you do look like a peasant!” he said.

Un equilibrio entre lo bueno y lo malo puede abrir las puertas del destino.

I lived in that contented state a long while before I was finally able to look back and admit how desolate my life had once been. I’m sure I could never have told my story otherwise; I don’t think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.

Every man has his destiny. But who needs to go to a fortune-teller to find it?

My existence was as unstable as a stream, changing in every way; but the moth was like a piece of stone, changing not at all.

Two men are equals – true equals – only when they both have equal confidence.

Water never waits. It changes shape and flows around things, and finds the secret paths no one else has thought about – the tiny hole through the roof or the bottom of the 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 sweep it away. Even wood, which is its natural complement, can’t survive without being nurtured by water.

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.

Because I’d lived through adversity once before, what I learned about myself was like a reminder of something I’d once known but had nearly forgotten-namely, that beneath the elegant clothing, and the accomplished dancing, and the clever conversation, my life had no complexity at all, but was as simple as a stone falling toward the ground. My whole purpose in everything during the past ten years had been to win the affections of the Chairman.

Remember, Chiyo, geisha are not courtesans. And we are not wives. We sell our skills, not our bodies. We create another secret world, a place only of beauty. The very word “geisha” means artist and to be a geisha is to be judged as a moving work of art.