Top 384 Quotes & Sayings by Isabel Allende - Page 3

I never thought that I would come to live in the United States. I was not pursuing the American dream.

I speak English and Spanish. I write in Spanish; my books are published in English.

The world starts to exist, for Americans, when we are in conflict with a place. And then all of a sudden, Afghanistan pops up on the TV screen and it becomes a place. And it exists for three weeks, and then it disappears into thin air.

If I can write it, I can cope. And I've been writing many books, but in every book, I try to explore something in my own soul that I need to solve, I need to understand.

My father left when I was three, and I have no memory of him. The most significant male figures in my life were my grandfather, in whose house I lived during the first 10 years of my childhood, and later my stepfather.

All summer, I read fiction because you must read for the pleasure and beauty of it, and not only for research. 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.

The longest, most solid and complex relationship in my life is with my mother. It started before I was born, and now, when I am 71 and living in California and she is 92 and living in Chile, we are still in touch daily.

if we don't begin by imagining the perfect society, how shall we create one?

Friendship is all about trust and sharing. Passionate and romantic love is all about sex and emotions. You have to try to combine those, I think. The great marriages, the great couples I know, have both.

Peace requires everyone to be in the circle - wholeness, inclusion.

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

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

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

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

We only have what we give.

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 . . .

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.

Photographs deceive time, freezing it on a piece of cardboard where the soul is silent.

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

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.

Having a point to start is important. You know that when you decide to write something it's like a commitment. It's like falling in love.

As I travel through life, I gather experiences that lie imprinted on the deepest strata of memory, and there they ferment, are transformed, and sometimes rise to the surface and sprout like strange plants from other worlds. What is the fertile humus of the subconscious composed of? Why are certain images converted into recurrent themes in nightmares or writing?

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

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

Nothing's as dangerous as power with impunity.

A man does what he can; a woman does what a man cannot.

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.

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.

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.

There is no light without shadow, just as there is no happiness without pain.

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.

What is truer than truth? Answer: the story.

Write what should not be forgotten.

Those who seek the truth run the risk of finding it.

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.

Sisters: talk to each other, be connected and informed, form women's circles, share your stories, work together, and take risks. Together we are invincible.

How can one not speak about war, poverty, and inequality when people who suffer from these afflictions don't have a voice to speak?

In terrible moments, in moments of revolution, of war or repression, of illness or death, people react with incredible strength.

You spend the first part of your life collecting things ... and the second half getting rid of them.

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.

Words are not that important when you recognize intentions.

When you make an omelet, as when you make love, affection counts for more than technique.

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.

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.

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

You only have what you give. It’s by spending yourself that you become rich.

Society decides when we get old. But the spirit never ages.

Nothing changes; we humans repeat the same sins over and over, eternally.

...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.

True friendship resists time, distance and silence.

Many children fly like birds, guess other people's dreams, and speak with ghosts, but ... they all outgrow it when they lose their innocence.

The two moments are much alike: birth and death are made of the same fabric.

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.

Every person is born with a talent, and happiness depends on discovering that talent in time.

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

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

Silence before being born, silence after death: life is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences.

Music is a wind that blows away the years, memories, and fear, that crouching animal I carry inside me.

...when everything else fails, we communicate in the language of the stars

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