Quote

There's nothing in Chinese culture that is an equivalent of the geisha. It's so different, so special to Japan.

To be a geisha, you have to have to an iron-clad layer around you - around your physical body and your heart.

What I really wanted to know, though, was what it was like to be a geisha? Where do you sleep? What do you eat? How do you have your hair done?

I was really interested in geishas' work, and wanted to meet real geishas.

For myself I don't like the geisha look. It's like a mask.

Martial arts is just practice. Being a geisha requires complete control.

'Memoirs of a Geisha' is everything you'd expect it to be: beautiful, mesmerizing, tasteful, Japanese. It's just not very hot.

Geisha because when I was living in Japan, I met a fellow whose mother was a geisha, and I thought that was kind of fascinating and ended up reading about the subject just about the same time I was getting interested in writing fiction.

I studied Japanese language and culture in college and graduate school, and afterward went to work in Tokyo, where I met a young man whose father was a famous businessman and whose mother was a geisha. He and I never discussed his parentage, which was an open secret, but it fascinated me.

This character in the film, these things that he says which sound like advice and wise things, they are very common for Orientals. It's all the tradition.