Isabel Allende Quotes

Do you truly believe that life is fair, Senor de la Vega? -No, maestro, but I plan to do everything in my power to make it so.

Erotica is using a feather; pornograpy is using the whole chicken.

When I write fiction, I never try to deliver a message; I just want to tell a story. But I admit that I want the story to be memorable and the characters to touch the reader's heart.

Boredom, Timothy Duane assured me, is nothing more than anger without passion.

The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.

We live in an era where masses of people come and go across a hostile planet, desolate and violent. Refugees, emigrants, exiles, deportees. We are a tragic contingent.

My female protagonist will not be this promiscuous, beautiful, dark-haired, thin lady. It will be a plump, blond, healer and so forth.

Conceit is a privilege of the ignorant; the wise man is humble because he knows how little he knows.

I had a very rough childhood and not a happy one and by age 15 I was an old person in many ways. I knew that I had to take care of myself, I um and I always did.

Every person is born with a talent, and happiness depends on discovering that talent in time.

They could not understand the advantage of living contrary to their inclinations in this world in order to enjoy a hypothetical well-being in another.

My life is about ups and downs, great joys and great losses.

Happiness is pure kitch; we come into the world to suffer and learn.

The first few months of my life of every year are in total retreat. I don't see anybody except my husband and my dog, I don't talk to anybody, and I just write.

I need to tell a story. It's an obsession. Each story is a seed inside of me that starts to grow and grow, like a tumor, and I have to deal with it sooner or later.

Love is a free contract that begins with a spark and can end the same way.

I write to understand my circumstances, to sort out the confusion of reality, to exorcise my demons. But most of all, I write because I love it!

Writing is a process, a journey into memory and the soul.

Memory is fiction. We select the brightest and the darkest, ignoring what we are ashamed of, and so embroider the broad tapestry of our lives.

Words are not that important when you recognize intentions.

You can't find someone who doesn't want to be found.

How many times have I told you not to believe everything you hear? Seek truth for yourself.

Give, give, give-what is the point of having experience, knowledge or talent if I don't give it away?

I'm living in California but I have a place that is mine in Chile and I belong there. I am no longer an exile.

There is no death, daughter. People die only when we forget them.

I don't want posterity, I don't want anybody to remember me in any way. I don't care about that because I'll be dead. I think the spirit will move to some other state.

Affection is like the noonday sun; it does not need the presence of another to be manifest.

If I didn't write my soul would dry up and die.

With women the best aphrodisiac is words.

Writing is a constant exercise in longing.

Nice people with common sense do not make interesting characters. They only make good former spouses.

I need to remember to overcome.

If this world is going to be a better place for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, it will be women who make it so.

How accommodating love is; it forgives everything.

you can tell the deepest truths with the lies of fiction

Most people feel younger than their age, but the culture values youth, success, beauty, productivity. There is no space in this culture for older people.

I don't want an uneventful and safe life, I prefer an adventurous one.

My worst flaw is that I tell secrets, my own and everybody else's.

Nothing changes; we humans repeat the same sins over and over, eternally.

Although women do two-thirds of the world's labor, they own less than one percent of the world's assets.

Empowering women means trusting them.

He realized...that the loudest are the least sincere, that arrogance is a quality of the ignorant, and that flatterers tend to be vicious.

I'm not above anybody. I'm, I'm not better than anybody. I am made of the same material that everybody else is and if somebody can be a saint, so can I and if somebody can be a torturer, so can I.

The writer of good will carries a lamp to illuminate the dark corners.

Women are the only ones who will be able to eliminate the patriarchy, and when that happens all of us will win, men as much as women.

Photographs deceive time, freezing it on a piece of cardboard where the soul is silent.

I am happier when I love than when I am loved. I adore my husband, my son, my grandchildren, my mother, my dog, and frankly, I don't know if they even like me. But who cares? Loving them is my joy.

He was not oppressed by a crowd because in the midst of all the hullabaloo he always found a quiet place for his soul.

Wishes and fears are illusions, Dil Bahadur, not realities. You must practice detachment.

In times of conflict, war, poverty or religious fundamentalism, women and children are the first and most numerous victims. Women need all their courage today.