Isabel Allende Quotes

“Perhaps we are in this world to search for love, find it and lose it, again and again. With each love, we are born anew, and with each love that ends we collect a new wound. I am covered with proud scars.”

“We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test.”

“You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend, or not.”

“Be careful what you ask of Heaven; it might be granted.”

“​Courage is a virtue appreciated in a male but considered a defect in our gender. Bold women are a threat to a world that is badly out of balance, in favor of men.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“The names of persons and living creatures demand respect, because when we speak to them we touch their heart and become a part of thier life force.”

“That was a good time in my life, in spite of having the sensation of floating on a cloud, surrounded by both lies and things left unspoken. Occasionally I thought I glimpsed the truth, but soon found myself once again lost in a forest of ambiguities.”

“Writing is like making love. Don't worry about the orgasm, just concentrate on the process.”

“Accept the children the way we accept trees—with gratitude, because they are a blessing—but do not have expectations or desires. You don’t expect trees to change, you love them as they are.”

“If I write something, I fear it will happen, and if I love too much, I fear I will lose that person; nevertheless, I cannot stop writing or loving…”

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

“When love exists, nothing else matters, not life’s predicaments, not the fury of the years, not a physical winding down or scarcity of opportunity.”

“I seek truth and beauty in the transparency of an autumn leaf, in the perfect form of a seashell on the beach, in the curve of a woman's back, in the texture of an ancient tree trunk, but also in the elusive forms of reality.”

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

“Write what should not be forgotten.”

“The longer I live, the more uninformed I feel. Only the young have an explanation for everything.”

“For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.”

“We only have what we give.”

“Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.”

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

“you can tell the deepest truths with the lies of fiction”

“Words are not that important when you recognize intentions.”

“This is to assuage our conscience, darling" she would explain to Blanca. "But it doesn't help the poor. They don't need charity; they need justice.”

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

“The source of my difficulties has always been the same: an inability to accept what to others seems natural, and an irresistible tendency to voice opinions no one wants to hear…”

“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.”

“And I am not one of those women who trips twice over the same stone.”

“… when everything else fails, we communicate in the language of the stars”

“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.”

“Barrabas came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy.”

“Writing is a constant exercise in longing.”

“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 need to remember to overcome.”

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

“Happiness is pure kitsch; we come into the world to suffer and learn.”

“Reading is like looking through several windows which open to an infinite landscape…. For me life without reading would be like being in prison, it would be as if my spirit were in a straightjacket; life would be a very dark and narrow place.”

“The slave who dances is free… while he is dancing.”

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

“His calls for justice were lost at the mercy of the wind and human indifference.”

“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.”

“There is room in the human heart for all the divinities.”

“It’s easy to judge others when we are not going through the same thing.”

“Before you conquer the mountain, you must learn to overcome your fear.”

“She intended to swallow the world and he lived crushed by reality.”

“Land is something one should never sell. It is the only thing left when all else is gone.”

“You are my angel and my damnation; in your presence I reach divine ecstasy and in your absence I descent to hell.”

“Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change”

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

“Remember that all the others are more afraid than you”

“I imagined the structure of the novel like a braid. My job was to blend three strands evenly and neatly. Each piece of the braid represented one of the stories. The characters were very different but they had something in common: they were emotionally wounded by events of their past.”

“The theme of displacement is very natural for me. It always comes up in my books because I have been a foreigner all my life and I don’t feel I belong anywhere. I’m an immigrant.”

“Thank God – because what are you going to write about if you don’t struggle as a child? I don’t think that you become creative because you have struggled, no, but creative people are fuelled by anger and passion, and haunted by demons and memories.”