Allende Isabel Quotes & Sayings

He had the intellectual capacity of a louse, but shone in cooking up new ways to be cruel. — Isabel Allende

All husbands are boring... No woman with ounce of sense gets married to be entertained, she marries to be maintained. — Isabel Allende

How exuberant and boisterous the universe is, Alma! It turns and turns, and the only constant is everything changes. It is a mystery we can only appreciate out of stillness. I'm living through a very interesting stage. My spirit contemplates the changes in my body with fascination, but this contemplation is not from a distance, but from within. My spirit and my body are together in this process. — Isabel Allende

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

He had only to touch me to turn my tears into sighs and my anger to desire. How accomodating love is; it forgives everything. — Isabel Allende

Dying is not easy. It's a very hard transition. — Isabel Allende

With women the best aphrodisiac is words. — Isabel Allende

If nothing hurts, that means I woke up dead, — Isabel Allende

But I don't want more things than I need, either. — Isabel Allende

I try to let go of the intellect and just tell the story. I only read the page I have in front of me on the screen. Then when the whole story is told, I print it, wait a week and read it. — Isabel Allende

They would regret that they had not killed him; he would get out of that hole and find Juliana sooner or later, even if he had to pursue her to hell itself. "Oh, you won't have to go that far, we are on our way to California," Diego said in farewell — Isabel Allende

Now of course we have Black historians, but they're usually men. We get the perspective always, the slanted perspective, of what has happened. The battles, the things achieved, the laws, but where are the people, the families? What happens inside the houses, inside the minds and the hearts? That's what I'm interested in. — Isabel Allende

Fourth of July picnic. And by the way, that picnic, like everything else in this land, is a model of efficiency: you drive at top speed, set up in a previously reserved space, spread out the baskets, bolt your food, kick the ball, and rush home to avoid the traffic. In Chile, a similar project would take three days. — Isabel Allende

We are all born happy. Life gets us dirty along the way, but we can clean it up. Happiness is not exuberant or noisy, like pleasure or joy; it's silent, tranquil, and gentle; it's a feeling of satisfaction inside that begins with self-love. You need to love yourself as I do, as all those who know you do, especially Alma's grandson. — Isabel Allende

Her Uncle Jaime felt that people never read what did not interest them and that if it interested them that meant they were sufficiently mature to read it. — Isabel Allende

Very few old folk are happy, Irina. Most of them are poor, aren't healthy, and have no family. It's the most fragile and difficult stage of life, more so than childhood, because it grows worse day by day, and there is no future other than death. — Isabel Allende

But why give a man something it's so hard to earn? In that respect women are really thick. They're the daughters of rigidity. They need a man to feel secure but they don't realize that the one thing they should be afraid of is men. They don't know how to run their lives. They have to sacrifice themselves for the sake of someone else. Whores are the worst, patron, believe me. They throw their lives away working for some pimp, smile when he beats them, feel proud when he's well dressed, with his gold teeth and rings on his fingers, and when he goes off and takes up with a woman half their age they forgive him everything because 'he's a man. — Isabel Allende

Long before the Europeans arrived in Africa, the blacks were enslaving each other. They still do," said Valmorain. "Just as whites are enslaving each other, monsieur," the physician countered. "Not all Negroes are slaves, nor all slaves black. Africa is a continent of free people. Millions of Africans are subjected to slavery but many more are free. Slavery is not their destiny, just as is also the case with thousands of whites who are slaves. — Isabel Allende

I think that my life changed at 50. Many things happened. Menopause, the end of youth and my daughter died that year after being a whole year in a coma. So I think that I changed and I became an elder at 50. — Isabel Allende

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. — Isabel Allende

epistolary communication: — Isabel Allende

They taught using an Italian system of experimental education in which the students did whatever the fuck we wanted. — Isabel Allende

Like my maestro, Juan Ribero, she believed that photography and painting are not competing arts but basically different: the painter interpets reality, and the camera captures it. In the former everything is fiction, while the second is the sum of the real plus the sensibility of the photographer. Ribero never allowed me sentimental or exhibitionist tricks-none of this arranging objects or models to look like paintings. He was the enemy of artificial compostion; he did not let me manipulate negatives or prints, and in general he scorned effects of spots or diffuse lighting: he wanted the honest and simple image, although clear in the most minute details. — Isabel Allende

I don't think that we have to look like the models in the magazines because they are 19 year olds and they have been photo shopped extensively, not but given what I, we have as the raw material, take care of it. — Isabel Allende

I'm always following the characters and I'm always interested in what happens to them, but what happens to them is conditioned by the circumstances in which they live. — Isabel Allende

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

Some people connect with a story and may find between the lines something that might be useful to him or her, but that's not the intention of the author, I think. At least not mine. — Isabel Allende

Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. — Isabel Allende

The biggest straitjacket is all the prejudices that we carry around, and all the fears. But what if we just surrender to the fear? There are things greater than fear. The great, wonderful quality of human beings is that we can overcome even absolute terror, and we do. — Isabel Allende

The slave who dances is free ... while he is dancing. — Isabel Allende

Remember that all the others are more afraid than you — Isabel Allende

I'm such a control freak. I want to control even my own death. Decide when I will die and how. — Isabel Allende

Sometimes I have these premonitions and I don't forget them, so I will be prepared when they happen. — Isabel Allende

Giving women education, work, the ability to control their own income, inherit and own property, benefits the society. If a woman is empowered, her children and her family will be better off. If families prosper, the village prospers, and eventually so does the whole country. — Isabel Allende

One of the things that always comes up in my writing is the search for freedom, especially in women. I always write about women who are marginalized, who have no means or resources and somehow manage to get out of those situations with incredible strength - and that is more important than anything. — Isabel Allende

If you write nonfiction, a historical account of what really happened, first of all, it's always white men who do that, and you don't have the voices that are really interesting to me, of the people who are not sheltered by the big umbrella of the establishment. — Isabel Allende

I'm fine here, Lenny. I'm discovering who I am without all my ornaments and accessories. It's quite a slow process, but a very useful one. Everybody ought to do the same at the end of their life. If I had any self-discipline I would beat my grandson to it and write my own memoirs. I have time, freedom, and silence, the three things I never had amidst all the noise of my earlier life. I'm preparing to die." "That won't — Isabel Allende

When I fall in love I'm obsessed. — Isabel Allende

Their most notable defect was that they considered work a virtue, even manual labor. They were materialists, conquerors, and they were infused with a messianic enthusiasm for reforming those who did not think as they did; they did not, however, represent an immediate threat to civilization. No — Isabel Allende

At the most difficult moments of my life, when it seemed that every door was closed to me, the taste of those apricots comes back to comfort me with the notion that abundance is always within reach, if only one knows how to find it. — Isabel Allende

Two thirds of the work in the world is done by women. Women own 1 percent of the assets. Young women are sold into prostitution, forced labour, premature marriage, forced to have children they don't want or they can't support. They're abused, raped, beaten up. Domestic violence is supposed to be a cultural problem. They are the first victims of war, fundamentalism, conflict, recession. And young women who have access to education and health care and have resources think that everything was done, they don't have to worry. — Isabel Allende

You write a book and it's like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean. You don't know if it will ever reach any shores. And there, you see, sometimes it falls in the hands of the right person. — Isabel Allende

We only appreciate what we have when we lose it. — Isabel Allende

At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another woman, who kept her notebooks so that one day I could use them. I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously ... That's why my Grandmother Clara wrote in her notebooks, in order to see things in their true dimension and to defy her own poor memory. — Isabel Allende

The connection that I have with my readers makes me very happy, and gives meaning to the strange profession of writing — Isabel Allende

Writing is like riding a bicycle: you don't forget how, even if you go for years without doing it. — Isabel Allende

We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward. In times of tragedy, of war, of necessity, people do amazing things. The human capacity for survival and renewal is awesome. — Isabel Allende

If we don't begin by imagining the perfect society, how shall we create one? — Isabel Allende

I come from the so-called Third World (what is the Second)? — Isabel Allende

Heart is what drives us and determines our fate. That is what I need for my characters in my books: a passionate heart. I need mavericks, dissidents, adventurers, outsiders and rebels, who ask questions, bend the rules and take risks. — Isabel Allende

I thought liberation had to do with going out into the world and assuming male duties, not with delegating part of my load. The result was a terrible fatigue, as witnessed today by the millions of women of my generation who question feminist movements. — Isabel Allende

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. — Isabel Allende

I never try to convey a message, I just want to tell a story. Why that story in particular? I have no idea, but I have learned to surrender to the muse. I become obsessed with a theme or with certain stories; they haunt me for years, and finally, I write them. — Isabel Allende

In terrible moments, in moments of revolution, of war or repression, of illness or death, people react with incredible strength. — Isabel Allende

I think that any writer who is commercial, who sells a lot of books, has to face criticism. Because the more hermetic and the more difficult your book is, supposedly it's better. — Isabel Allende

More and more books are published every year. If people were not reading them, they wouldn't be published. We are now reading electronic books or whatever else, but people are still reading, and people still need stories. — Isabel Allende

Happiness is slippery, it slithers away between your fingers, but problems are something you can hold on to, they've got handles, they're rough and hard — Isabel Allende

That was the beginning of the revolution. Many years have gone by and blood keeps running, soaking the soil of Haiti, but I am not there to weep. — Isabel Allende

In my private circle I am a mother, grandmother, wife, friend, daughter ... the success means nothing to my small tribe. — Isabel Allende

The longest, most solid and complex relationship in my life is with my mother. It started before I was born, and now, when I am 71 and living in California and she is 92 and living in Chile, we are still in touch daily. — Isabel Allende

I was alone, without a single cent, in an unknown country. If I'd learned anything from last year's ill-fated adventures, though, it was not to get overwhelmed by minor inconveniences. — Isabel Allende

Only in romance novels or in thrillers people live outside of a social and political context. — Isabel Allende

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

Death, with its ancestral weight of terrors, is merely the abandonment of an unserviceable shell at the time the spiritis reintegrated into the unified energy of the cosmos. The end of life, like birth, is a stagein a voyage, and deserves the compassion we accord to its beginnings. There is absolutely no virtue in prolonging the heartbeat and tremors of a body beyond its natural span ... — Isabel Allende

She sowed in my mind the idea that reality is not only what we see on the surface; it has a magical dimension as well and, if we so desire, it is legitimate to enhance it and color it to make our journey through life less trying. — Isabel Allende

But even the most valiant and honorable men sometimes fail their women. — Isabel Allende

You only have one life, but if you live it well, that's enough. The only reality is now, today. What are you waiting for to be happy? — Isabel Allende

The world starts to exist, for Americans, when we are in conflict with a place. And then all of a sudden, Afghanistan pops up on the TV screen and it becomes a place. And it exists for three weeks, and then it disappears into thin air. — Isabel Allende

Everything that has to do with food is sensuous. In the United States, however, we are eating all the time. We have a problem with obesity. And yet, we don't enjoy food that much. — Isabel Allende

Having a point to start is important. You know that when you decide to write something it's like a commitment. It's like falling in love. — Isabel Allende

I'm aware of the mystery around us, so I write about coincidences, premonitions, emotions, dreams, the power of nature, magic. — Isabel Allende

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

I don't read thrillers, romance or mystery, and I don't read self-help books because I don't believe in shortcuts and loopholes. — Isabel Allende

And what are we going to tell people?" exclaimed Doris. "That I'm old and crazy. That wouldn't be far off the mark," Alma replied. — Isabel Allende

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

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

A fixation is very stubborn: it burrows into the brain and breaks the heart. There are many fixations, but love is the worst. — Isabel Allende

alive who have read the three complete volumes of the ageless epic La Araucana, in rhyme and old Spanish. — Isabel Allende

The girl you were died; the potion of death was what all of us women swallow sooner or later. Have you noticed how at puberty the Amazon-like energy we are born with fades and we turn into doubt-filled creatures with clipped wings? The woman left trapped in the silo is also you, a prisoner of the restrictions of adult life. The female condition is a disgrace, Isabel, it's like having rocks tied to your ankles so you can't fly. — Isabel Allende

For women in my lifetime things have changed quite a bit, but not enough. They have only changed for women that have education and access to health care in the Western world. But look at the rest of the world. Still in many places, women are sold into premature marriages, prostitution, forced labor; they are forced to have children that they cannot support or that they don't want. They are abused, tortured, exploited and even killed with impunity. — Isabel Allende

For real change, we need feminine energy in the management of the world. We need a critical number of women in positions of power, and we need to nurture the feminine energy in men. — Isabel Allende

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. — Isabel Allende

Those who seek the truth run the risk of finding it. — Isabel Allende

A memoir is my version of events. My perspective. I choose what to tell and what to omit. I choose the adjectives to describe a situation, and in that sense, I'm creating a form of fiction. — Isabel Allende

Friendship is all about trust and sharing. Passionate and romantic love is all about sex and emotions. You have to try to combine those, I think. The great marriages, the great couples I know, have both. — Isabel Allende

He knew that her body was his to engage in all the acrobatics he had learned in the books he kept hidden in a corner of his library, but with Clara even the most abominable contortions were like the thrashings of a newborn; it was impossible to spice them up with the salt of evil or the pepper of submission. — Isabel Allende

It's easy to judge others when we are not going through the same thing. — Isabel Allende

Barrabas came to us by the sea. — Isabel Allende

I have travelled all over the world and one thing that amazes me is that I can communicate with people. My story may be different but emotionally we are all the same. — Isabel Allende

The only good thing about marriage is becoming a widow — Isabel Allende

At five I was already a feminist, and nobody used the word in Chile yet. — Isabel Allende

Our demons lose their power when we pull them out of the depths where they hide and look them in the face in broad daylight. — Isabel Allende

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

It was an election year and there was reason for concern over the turn of events. The country was waking up. The wave of discontent that was stirring the people was beginning to strike at the heart of that oligarchic society. — Isabel Allende

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

We have all the technology to record things in the streets. Now the historians cannot twist it or change it, because we have cellular phones or video cameras, and we are filming in the streets what's going on. We have the voices of everybody recorded. There's too much recording and I think that's wonderful. — Isabel Allende

He missed his venerable master, who had marked him forever with a thirst for knowledge as persistent as the drunk's thirst for alcohol or the ambitious man's thirst for power. He no longer had his mentor's library or his inexhaustible fount of experience. — Isabel Allende

Color prejudice is so strong that if a woman has yellow hair, even if she has the face of an iguana, men turn to look at her in the street. — Isabel Allende

All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom. — Isabel Allende

I was born in the middle of the Second World War when the United States dropped their atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when millions of people were dying in concentration camps, when half the planet were colonies that belonged to empires. The word feminism didn't exist. And in my lifetime I have seen all these things improved, changed. We are more connected, more informed. We can fight against stuff together in ways we couldn't before. — Isabel Allende