Isabel Allende citations

Page 2

“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.”

“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.”

“I need to remember to overcome.”

“… a fixation is very stubborn: it burrows into the brain and breaks the heart. There are many fixations, but love is the worst.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”