Quotes from Autobiography of a Geisha

186 pages

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“When someone who's starved of love is shown something that looks like sincere affection, is it any wonder that she jumps at it and clings to it?”
― quote from Autobiography of a Geisha


“What a lovely place this world would be if only people would feel affection for everyone else, and all the ugliness of the human heart were to vanish - our envy of those better off than ourselves and our scorn for those worse off.”
― quote from Autobiography of a Geisha


“No matter how deep in disgrace, a human being IS human, after all.”
― quote from Autobiography of a Geisha


“Nor was I the only one struggling.To live an ordinary life, like any ordinary person, must have been the vain dream of countless others.”
― quote from Autobiography of a Geisha


“Only when I turned thirty did I finally feel for the first time that I was free, that I could live as I liked, as an individual. It's as if at thirty, I'd been born for the first time. Until then, I was never more than someone's tool.”
― quote from Autobiography of a Geisha



“Never give birth to children thoughtlessly!'' I want to shout it out loud.That is why, stroke by faltering stroke, I've written this all down.”
― quote from Autobiography of a Geisha


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“You're you,' he repeats, his eyes full of grief. 'You're the same girl who crashed on this planet with me, who I dragged through forests and over mountains, who climbed through a shipwreck full of bodies to save my life. You're the same girl I loved, and I love you now.”
― Amie Kaufman, quote from These Broken Stars


“He liked the fact that Venice had no cars. It made the city human. The streets were like veins, he thought, and the people were the blood, circulating everywhere.”
― Patricia Highsmith, quote from The Talented Mr. Ripley


“Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lost the courts and wait for a White House scandal.
And increasingly we feel the need to match the Republican right in stridency and hardball tactics. The accepted wisdom that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists these days goes like this: The Republican Party has been able to consistently win elections not by expanding its base but by vilifying Democrats, driving wedges into the electorate, energizing its right wing, and disciplining those who stray from the party line. If the Democrats ever want to get back into power, then they will have to take up the same approach.
...Ultimately, though, I believe any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharply partisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we're in. I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it's precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face as a country. It's what keeps us locked in "either/or" thinking: the notion that we can have only big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace "socialized medicine". It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off of politics. ”
― Barack Obama, quote from The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream


“He lay, often, looking at her sleeping face in the new light that fell in through the open walls of the strange house, and he stared at her skin and hair with his mouth open, transfixed by the quick stillness of her, struck dumb with the physical fact of her existence as though she was some careless star-thing that slept on quite unaware of its incandescent power; the casualness and ease with which she slept there amazed him; he couldn't believe that such beauty could survive without some superhumanly intense conscious effort.”
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