Films Set In The 1920s

"Ken Watanabe - Chairman Iwamura"

"Kôji Yakusho - President Nobu"

"Smile for me, won't you?"

"[When he first meets Chiyo by the river] Where did you come by such surprising eyes?"

"None of us find as much kindness in this life, as we should."

"Water is always in such a hurry. Perhaps it is just as well - we have no time to lose."

"No man would ever bid so much for a thing he had already taken."

"We don't become geisha to pursue our own destinies. We become geisha because we have no choice."

"A story like mine should never be told. For my world is as forbidden as it is fragile; without its mysteries it cannot survive."

"You cannot call yourself a true geisha until you can stop a man in his tracks with a single look."

"Remember Chiyo, geisha are not courtesans, and we're 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."

"To a man, Geisha can only be half a wife. We are the wives of nightfall. And yet to learn of kindness, after so much unkindness... To understand that a little girl with more courage than she knew, would find that her prayers were answered...can that not be called happiness? After all, these are not the memoirs of an empress, nor of a queen. These are memoirs of another kind."

"Now I understood the thing I´d overlooked; the point wasn't to become a geisha but to be one. To become a geisha...well, that was hardly a purpose in life. But to be a geisha... I could see it now as a stepping-stone to something else."

"I could be her. Were we so different? She loved once. She hoped once. I might be looking into my own future. Until the real future came falling from the air... [referring to the war]"

"A year without news, except news of death. Rumors of cities evaporating into clouds of smoke. And then another year, and another. Nothing. Rice...work...rice...work. Nothing."