Quotes from Autobiography of a Geisha

186 pages

Rating: (2.6K votes)


“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


Popular quotes

“The return of the voices would end in a migraine that made my whole body throb. I could do nothing except lie in a blacked-out room waiting for the voices to get infected by the pains in my head and clear off.

Knowing I was different with my OCD, anorexia and the voices that no one else seemed to hear made me feel isolated, disconnected. I took everything too seriously. I analysed things to death. I turned every word, and the intonation of every word over in my mind trying to decide exactly what it meant, whether there was a subtext or an implied criticism. I tried to recall the expressions on people’s faces, how those expressions changed, what they meant, whether what they said and the look on their faces matched and were therefore genuine or whether it was a sham, the kind word touched by irony or sarcasm, the smile that means pity.
When people looked at me closely could they see the little girl in my head, being abused in those pornographic clips projected behind my eyes?
That is what I would often be thinking and such thoughts ate away at the façade of self-confidence I was constantly raising and repairing.

(describing dissociative identity disorder/mpd symptoms)”
― quote from Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind


“One evening he was in his room, his brow pressing hard against the pane, looking, without seeing them, at the chestnut trees in the park, which had lost much of their russet-coloured foliage. A heavy mist obscured the distance, and the night was falling grey rather than black, stepping cautiously with its velvet feet upon the tops of the trees. A great swan plunged and replunged amorously its neck and shoulders into the smoking water of the river, and its whiteness made it show in the darkness like a great star of snow. It was the single living being that somewhat enlivened the lonely landscape.”
― Théophile Gautier, quote from Mademoiselle de Maupin


“All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, quote from Der kleine Prinz


“original ideas are the easy part. Actually producing the idea as a successful product is what is hard.”
― Donald A. Norman, quote from Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition (Revised)


“Looking back on it, could there possible have been a more confusing acronym for trying to keep kids from experimenting with drugs than DARE?
"Kids, we’re here today to DARE you not to do drugs! We DARE you to accept our DARE!"

"Office, does that mean you want us not to do drugs, or to do drugs?"
“We DARE you not to do drugs!”

"But I thought we weren’t supposed to do things We’re dared to do. If you dared me to jump out of a tree, I should do that, right?"

"It’s just an acronym, son."

"What is an acronym?”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories


Interesting books

Archangel
(9.1K)
Archangel
by Sharon Shinn
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again:  Essays and Arguments
(28.5K)
A Supposedly Fun Thi...
by David Foster Wallace
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
(66.1K)
In the Heart of the...
by Nathaniel Philbrick
The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939–45
(56.6K)
The Pianist: The Ext...
by Władysław Szpilman
The Imitation of Christ
(15.8K)
The Imitation of Chr...
by Thomas à Kempis
A Gathering of Shadows
(50.5K)
A Gathering of Shado...
by V.E. Schwab

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.