Isabel Allende

Twittering and blogging and all that is fine, but there is no idea of how to phrase something beautifully; how to use…

— Isabel Allende

The longest, most solid and complex relationship in my life is with my mother. It started before I was born, and now,…

— Isabel Allende

The pain of losing my child was a cleansing experience. I had to throw overboard all excess baggage and keep only what…

— Isabel Allende

The first two, three, four weeks are wasted. I just show up in front of the computer. Show up, show up, show…

— Isabel Allende

She never imagined a scenario in which her love was not returned with the same depth of feeling, for to her it…

— Isabel Allende

Women age more in company because they have more relationships. Men have buddies. They have acquaintances, they have comrades. Friends as women…

— Isabel Allende

The one that came really easy was the Japanese lover, because he's like a ghost in the book. He's always in the…

— Isabel Allende

At my age, people prefer to stay in a relationship that is not working. I do not understand that. I think it…

— Isabel Allende

“Words are free, she used to say, and she appropriated them; they were all hers. She sowed in my mind the idea…

— Isabel Allende

I'm not a fan of mysteries, so to prepare for this experience of writing a mystery I started reading the most successful…

— Isabel Allende

I'm surrounded by the scene of aging. I myself am in my 70s and not getting any younger. Although I'm very healthy,…

— Isabel Allende

Reading is like looking through several windows which open to an infinite landscape…For me life without reading would be like being in…

— Isabel Allende

Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something…

— Isabel Allende

“I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we…

— Isabel Allende

Heart is what drives us and determines our fate. That is what I need for my characters in my books: a passionate…

— Isabel Allende

“Lucia argued something similar. She gave as an example the Chihuahua, Marcelo, who lived eternally grateful in the present, accepting whatever might…

— Isabel Allende

When my daughter Paula died, I was in the deepest pain, and my mother said, "This kind of sorrow is like a…

— Isabel Allende

“Sadness and boredom were more bearable than the effort of living a normal life. Perhaps the idea of death began to hover…

— Isabel Allende

I have not changed; I am still the same girl I was fifty years ago and the same young woman I was…

— Isabel Allende

“She owed no one an explanation; if she had made mistakes she had been duly punished by giving up her family, suffering…

— Isabel Allende

She regretted nothing she had shared with her lover, nor was she ashamed of the fires that had changed her life; just…

— Isabel Allende

“What’s the worst thing about growing old?” she would ask them. They never thought about their age, was a common reply; they…

— Isabel Allende

I was born in the middle of World War II, the middle of the Holocaust; I was born when there was no…

— Isabel Allende

“He understood then that all his exploits as a reporter, the feats that had won him such recognition and fame, were merely…

— Isabel Allende

It is absurd to imagine that any child will be able to earn a living, let alone contribute to resolving our world's…

— Isabel Allende

“—Debe de ser difícil ser sacerdote con ese carácter tuyo —sonrió ella. —El voto de obediencia pesa una tonelada, Nuria, pero jamás…

— Isabel Allende

In the books I have written, I have created in my mind a universe. My kids say I have a village in…

— Isabel Allende

“Since we’re going to suffer, let’s clench our teeth,” she said. Pain like that, pain of the soul, does not go away…

— Isabel Allende

“People do not belong to others, either. How can the huincas buy and sell people if they do not own them. Sometimes…

— Isabel Allende

Humanity has this need to hear stories because they connect us with other people, they teach us about our own feelings. We…

— Isabel Allende

“Chile with the purpose of finding her lover and becoming his slave forever, believing that was the way to extinguish her thirst…

— Isabel Allende

I have a hundred-year-old aunt who aspires to sainthood, and whose only wish has been to go into the convent, but no…

— Isabel Allende