" In fact, at that very moment I was walking toward the event that would determine the rest of my life: I was to be sold as a geisha. Yet even if I had not been sold as a geisha, for someone like me, there could never be any road to happiness.
Even now it fills me with anger: I want to rage against the miserable lives we lead, those of us who are born into this world as blots of sin because of a parent's irresponsibility; I want to cry out that a life like mine must never be repeated. No matter how deep in disgrace, a human being is human, after all. The human spirit wanders ceaselessly in search of light; and if it finds a light of some sort, it strives somehow to get near it, struggling, writhing in anguish. Yet even as it writhes in anguish, it is drowned before it reaches the light. If you have the heart of a human being and you become the parent of a human being, then even if it exhausts every bit of your energy, until that child can walk alone I want you to do your duty as a parent."
p. 18, Autobiography of a Geisha by Sayo Masuda
This book made such an impact on me. I highly recommend reading it.
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