Isabel Allende Quotes And Sayings

I Have Become An American Citizen, And I Love This Country. I Think That This Country Has Incredible Potential For Goodness, An Incredible Possibility For Doing The Wrong Thing, Too.

I Was Born In Ancient Times, At The End Of The World, In A Patriarchal Catholic And Conservative Family. No Wonder That By Age Five I Was A Raging Feminist - Although The Term Had Not Reached Chile Yet, So Nobody Knew What The Heck Was Wrong With Me.

I Have Been A Foreigner All My Life, First As A Daughter Of Diplomats, Then As A Political Refugee And Now As An Immigrant In The U.s. I Have Had To Leave Everything Behind And Start Anew Several Times, And I Have Lost Most Of My Extended Family.

Men's Memoirs Are About Answers; Women's Memoirs Are About Questions. Most Male Authors Want To Look Good In Their Memoirs And Have A Place In Posterity, While Most Women Know That Posterity Is What Happens When You No Longer Care. Women Want To Connect With Others Here And Now; They Couldn't Care Less About Legacy!

A Man Who Cooks Is Very Sexy. A Woman Who Cooks Is Not That Sexy. Because It's Associated In Our Mind To The Domestic Cliche Of The Woman.

I Can Promise You That Women Working Together - Linked, Informed And Educated - Can Bring Peace And Prosperity To This Forsaken Planet.

In 2011, I Announced That I Was Going To Retire, And My Agent Panicked. So She Says: 'No, No, No. You Have To Write A Book With Your Husband.' My Husband Is A Writer Of Crime Novels. His Name Is William Gordon. And So I Had To Accommodate To His Style Because That's What He Writes. So We Decided We'd Give It A Try. Well, We Almost Divorced.

I'm Aware Of The Mystery Around Us, So I Write About Coincidences, Premonitions, Emotions, Dreams, The Power Of Nature, Magic.

Nice People With Common Sense Do Not Make Interesting Characters. They Only Make Good Former Spouses.

The Pain Of Losing My Child Was A Cleansing Experience. I Had To Throw Overboard All Excess Baggage And Keep Only What Is Essential.

We Want A World Where Life Is Preserved, And The Quality Of Life Is Enriched For Everybody, Not Only For The Privileged.

Heart Is What Drives Us And Determines Our Fate.

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!

The First Lie Of Fiction Is That The Author Gives Some Order To The Chaos Of Life: Chronological Order, Or Whatever Order The Author Chooses.

I Was Not Supposed To Be In Any Way A Liberated Person. I Was A Female Born In The '40s In A Patriarchal Family; I Was Supposed To Marry And Make Everyone Around Me Happy.

I Don't Think I Would Be A Writer If I Had Stayed In Chile. I Would Be Trapped In The Chores, In The Family, In The Person That People Expected Me To Be.

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.

Feminism Has Never Been Sexy, But Let Me Assure You That It Never Stopped Me From Flirting, And I Have Seldom Suffered From Lack Of Men.

A Memoir Is An Invitation Into Another Person's Privacy.

I Never Had Time To Think About My Beliefs Until My 28-year-old Daughter Paula Fell Ill. She Was In A Coma For A Year, And I Took Care Of Her At Home Until She Died In My Arms In December Of 1992.

There's Basically An Element Of Fiction In Everything You Remember. Imagination And Memory Are Almost The Same Brain Processes. When I Write Fiction, I Know That I'm Using A Bunch Of Lies That I've Made Up To Create Some Form Of Truth. When I Write A Memoir, I'm Using True Elements To Create Something That Will Always Be Somehow Fictionalized.

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.

I Like Historical Fiction. I Fell In Love With New Orleans The First Time I Visited It. And I Wanted To Place A Story In New Orleans.

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.

My Father Left When I Was Three, And I Have No Memory Of Him. The Most Significant Male Figures In My Life Were My Grandfather, In Whose House I Lived During The First 10 Years Of My Childhood, And Later My Stepfather.

Roots Are Not In Landscape Or A Country, Or A People, They Are Inside You.

My Writing Comes Not From The Happy Moments, But From Struggle And Grief.

Empowering Women Means Trusting Them.

My Desk Is Like A 'U,' So I Have My Computer And Lots Of Dictionaries Because I Write In Spanish And I Live In English.

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.

From Journalism I Learned To Write Under Pressure, To Work With Deadlines, To Have Limited Space And Time, To Conduct And Interview, To Find Information, To Research, And Above All, To Use Language As Efficiently As Possible And To Remember Always That There Is A Reader Out There.

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.

The Fact That You Own A Gun And Shoot To Defend Your Life Is A Very American Way Of Thinking.

I'm Interested In People Who Have To Overcome Obstacles, People Who Are Not Sheltered By The Umbrella Of The Establishment, Marginals.

I Speak English And Spanish. I Write In Spanish; My Books Are Published In English.

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.

Kids Are Smart: Don't Underestimate Their Bull Detector. Contemporary Kids Have Access To A Lot Of Information, So Don't Even Try To Fool Them. I Have Never Been More Nervous About My Research Than When Writing For Young Adults Because They Pick Up Every Single Error.

I Was A Political Refugee Living In Venezuela. I Had A Job That Was Twelve Hours A Day, No Money. It Was A Hard Time.

Everybody Has Losses - It's Unavoidable In Life. Sharing Our Pain Is Very Healing.

Give, Give, Give - What Is The Point Of Having Experience, Knowledge Or Talent If I Don't Give It Away? Of Having Stories If I Don't Tell Them To Others? Of Having Wealth If I Don't Share It? I Don't Intend To Be Cremated With Any Of It! It Is In Giving That I Connect With Others, With The World And With The Divine.

Although Women Do Two-thirds Of The World's Labor, They Own Less Than One Percent Of The World's Assets.

Feminism Is Dated? Yes, For Privileged Women Like My Daughter And All Of Us Here Today, But Not For Most Of Our Sisters In The Rest Of The World Who Are Still Forced Into Premature Marriage, Prostitution, Forced Labor - They Have Children That They Don't Want Or They Cannot Feed.

Feminism Is Not Dead, By No Means. It Has Evolved. If You Don't Like The Term, Change It, For Goddess' Sake. Call It Aphrodite, Or Venus, Or Bimbo, Or Whatever You Want; The Name Doesn't Matter, As Long As We Understand What It Is About, And We Support It.

The Poorest And Most Backward Societies Are Always Those That Put Women Down.

One Of The Characteristics Of North American Culture Is That You Can Always Start Again. You Can Always Move Forward, Cross A Border Of A State Or A City Or A County, And Move West, Most Of The Time West. You Leave Behind Guilt, Past Traditions, Memories.

Americans Have A Warrior's Mentality, Most Of Them. That's How This Society Was Built. The Fact That You Own A Gun And Shoot To Defend Your Life Is A Very American Way Of Thinking.

Writing Is A Calling, Not A Choice.

I Write Until The First Draft Is Finished, And Then I Feel That I Can Get Out. But, During The Time Of The Writing Of The First Draft, I Don't Go Out. I'm Just Locked Away, Writing. It's A Time Of Meditation, Of Going Into The Story.

Twittering And Blogging And All That Is Fine, But There Is No Idea Of How To Phrase Something Beautifully; How To Use Language To Create An Emotion. It's Just Passing Information And Sometimes Very Superficial Information.

I Have A Foot Here And A Foot In Some Spirit World. There Are Many More Layers To Reality, And That Permeates My Life And My Writing In A Very Natural Way. I Don't Even Think About It.