Isabel Allende
Only that, nothing more - a tiny beam of light to show some hidden aspect of reality, to help decipher and understand it and thus to initiate, if possible, a change in the conscience of some readers.Collection: Reality
A novel is like a window, open to an infinite landscape.Collection: Landscape
The first two, three, four weeks are wasted. I just show up in front of the computer. Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn't show up invited, eventually she just shows up.Collection: Writing
The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.Collection: Night
What happens in the world affects me. Sometimes, that's part of the writing.Collection: Writing
Dying is not easy. It's a very hard transition.Collection: Dying
Sex is the instrument and love the music.Collection: Sex
At my age days dissolve like salt in water; the day's gone and I don't even know what I've done with the hours.Collection: Time
You have the health you deserve.Collection: Deserve
Everyone is born with some special talent.Collection: Special
Someone has said that conversation is sex for the soul.Collection: Sex
...a fixation is very stubborn: it burrows into the brain and breaks the heart. There are many fixations, but love is the worst.Collection: Heart
In my private circle I am a mother, grandmother, wife, friend, daughter... the success means nothing to my small tribe.Collection: Daughter
I learned very quickly that when you emigrate, you lose the crutches that have been your support; you must begin from zero, because the past is erased with a single stroke and no one cares where you’re from or what you did before.Collection: Zero
Writing is a process, a journey into memory and the soul.Collection: Memories
My grandfather was dying, and told the family he had decided to die. ... At that moment I wanted so badly to write and tell him that he was never going to die, that somehow he would always be present in my life, because he had a theory that death didn't exist, only forgetfulness did. He believed that if you can keep people in your memory, they will live forever. That's what he did with my grandmother.Collection: Memories
My worst flaw is that I tell secrets, my own and everybody else's.Collection: Secret
Writing is a constant exercise in longing.Collection: Writing
I began to wonder whether anything truly existed, whether reality wasn't an unformed and gelatinous substance only half-captured by my senses....If that were true, each of us was living in absolute isolation. The thought terrified me. I was consoled by the idea that I could take that gelatin and mold it to create anything I wanted...At times I felt that the universe fabricated from the power of the imagination had stronger and more lasting contours than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around me.Collection: Reality
The most savory grape, the one that produces the wines with best texture and aroma, the sweetest and most generous, doesn't grow in rich soil but in stony land; the plant, with a mother's obstinacy, overcomes obstacles to thrust its roots deep into the ground and take advantage of every drop of water. That, my grandmother explained to me, is how flavors are concentrated in the grape.Collection: Mother
When I'm scared - and I'm always scared when I have to face an audience, when I have to read a review, when I publish a book...then, I think of my grandfather. My grandfather was this strong, tough Basque who would never bend....What would he do? Well, he would go ahead, close his eyes, and drive forward. You do it and the spirit that is within you....is there.Collection: Strong
Photographs deceive time, freezing it on a piece of cardboard where the soul is silent.Collection: Photography
Humanity has this need to hear stories because they connect us with other people, they teach us about our own feelings. We feel less lonely when we see other people going through the same things, even if they're fictional characters.Collection: Lonely
Nothing's as dangerous as power with impunity.Collection: Dangerous
And I am not one of those women who trips twice over the same stone.Collection: Loneliness
When a man's earning his living doing things he doesn't like, he feels like a slave; when he's doing what he loves, he feels like a prince.Collection: Men
Be careful what you ask of Heaven; it might be granted.Collection: Heaven
At my age, people prefer to stay in a relationship that is not working. I do not understand that. I think it takes a lot of courage to separate. But it takes more energy to stay in something that is not working.Collection: Thinking
Most people feel younger than their age, but the culture values youth, success, beauty, productivity. There is no space in this culture for older people.Collection: Space
Love is a free contract that begins with a spark and can end the same way.Collection: Love Is
At times I felt that the universe fabricated from the power of the imagination had stronger and more lasting contours than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around me.Collection: Blood
Nothing changes; we humans repeat the same sins over and over, eternally.Collection: Sin
...memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously.Collection: Memories
The two moments are much alike: birth and death are made of the same fabric.Collection: Two
When you make an omelet, as when you make love, affection counts for more than technique.Collection: Making Love
you can tell the deepest truths with the lies of fictionCollection: Lying
Aphrodite is about lust and gluttony - the only two sins worth committing, in my opinion.Collection: Two
As my Popo used to say, life is a tapestry we weave day by day with threads of different colors, some heavy and dark, others thin and bright, all the threads having their uses. The stupid things I did are already in the tapestry, indelible, but I’m not going to be weighed down by them till I die. What’s done is done; I have to look ahead.Collection: Stupid
Affection is like the noonday sun; it does not need the presence of another to be manifest.Collection: Doe
Every time I asked a question, that magnificent teacher, instead of giving the answer, showed me how to find it. She taught me to organise my thoughts, to do research, to read and listen, to seek alternatives, to resolve old problems with new solutions, to argue logically. Above all, she taught me not to believe anything blindly, to doubt, and to question even what seemed irrefutably true, such as man's superiority over woman, or one race or social class over another.Collection: Teacher
if we don't begin by imagining the perfect society, how shall we create one?Collection: Perfect
Silence before being born, silence after death: life is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences.Collection: Two
You are my angel and my damnation; in your presence I reach divine ecstasy and in your absence I descent to hell.Collection: Love
Every person is born with a talent, and happiness depends on discovering that talent in time.Collection: Talent
We only have what we give.Collection: Helping Others
You spend the first part of your life collecting things ... and the second half getting rid of them.Collection: Collecting Things
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.Collection: Gratitude
A man does what he can; a woman does what a man cannot.Collection: Women
What is truer than truth? Answer: the story.Collection: Stories