Isabel Allende
I never try to give a message in my books. It's about living with characters long enough to hear their voices and let them tell me the story. Sometimes I would love to have a happy ending, and it doesn't happen because the character or the story leads me in another direction.
I can't control life for my grandchildren, so how could I control a story? Sometimes I try to force something, and after working and working on that chapter, I realise that I am swimming against the current. I will never get there. So I have to let go of whatever previous idea I had about it and let the characters decide.
I get thousands of letters, and they give me a feeling of how each book is perceived. Often I think I have written about a certain theme, but by reading the letters or reviews, I realise that everybody sees the book differently.
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.
When I write fiction, I never try to deliver a message; I just want to tell a story. But I admit that I want the story to be memorable and the characters to touch the reader's heart.
I get up every morning early, when the sky is red, and write for 10 hours.
My mother didn't want me to be a feminist, a radical, political person, because she was scared. She wanted me to be protected and safe, but my life never was.
In the books I have written, I have created in my mind a universe. My kids say I have a village in my head and I live in that village, and it's true. When I start writing a book, characters from previous books reappear. All my emotions, my mind, my heart, my dreams, everything becomes connected with a new book, and nothing else really matters.
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.
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.
Every life of a character is within a context. If I write detached from a social and political background, my story looks like a soap opera where everybody is indoors, not working and living off their emotions.
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.
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.
The fact that you own a gun and shoot to defend your life is a very American way of thinking.
In the United States, the fact that you can start again gives a lot of energy and strength and youth to this country. That is why it's so powerful in many ways, and so creative.
I rebelled against all form of authority, against my grandfather, my step-father, the Church, the police, the government, the bosses. Everything male that was there, and was determining my life.
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 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.
The pain of losing my child was a cleansing experience. I had to throw overboard all excess baggage and keep only what is essential.
I remember my childhood as a horrible time. My mother says that nothing so horrible ever happened to me as the things that I remember.
At five I was already a feminist, and nobody used the word in Chile yet.
If I had to choose between a relative and a good story, I would take the story.
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.
I try to write the kind of books I like to read.
You couldn't find two people more different than my mother and I. There are a thousand things about me that she fought against.
My mother is a great artist, but she always treated her paintings like minor postcards. Had she pursued it, she would have been a great artist. Instead, she looked down on her art.
You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend, or not.Collection: Legends
It is a wonderful truth that things we want most in life-a sense of purpose, happiness and hope-are most easily attained by giving them to others.Collection: Giving
We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test.Collection: Tests
There is no light without shadow, just as there is no happiness without pain.Collection: Pain
We are too connected. There's noise in our heads all the time.Collection: Technology
Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.Collection: Fear
Life is very mysterious and there are many things we don't know. And there are elements of magic realism in every culture, everywhere. It's just accepting that we don't know everything and everything is possible.Collection: Magic Realism
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.Collection: Love
You only have what you give. It’s by spending yourself that you become rich.Collection: Giving
Youth is not a period in life but a state of mind.Collection: Mind
There is no death, daughter. People die only when we forget them,' my mother explained shortly before she left me. 'If you can remember me, I will be with you always.Collection: Daughter
We don't have an explanation for everything that happens. We don't control almost anything. And if we are not open to that mystery, life becomes so small.Collection: Mystery
Words are not that important when you recognize intentions.Collection: Important
The hardest thing of love is to let go.Collection: Letting Go
True friendship resists time, distance and silence.Collection: True Friend
How many times have I told you not to believe everything you hear? Seek truth for yourself.Collection: Believe
Write what should not be forgotten.Collection: Writing
Society decides when we get old. But the spirit never ages.Collection: Age
Remember that all the others are more afraid than youCollection: Remember
People are afraid of falling in love because they don't want to suffer.Collection: Falling In Love
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.Collection: Writing
Love is music, and sex is only the instrument.Collection: Sex
Fiction happens in the womb. It doesn't get processed in the mind until you do the editing.Collection: Editing