Isabel Allende Quotes

Literary characters, like my grandmother's apparitions, are fragile beings, easily frightened; they must be treated with care so they will feel comfortable in my pages

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.

The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.

I write, she wrote, that 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 . . . And now I seek my hatred and cannot seem to find it. I feel its flame going out as I come to understand [its] existence . . . It would be difficult for me to avenge all those who should be avenged, because my revenge would be just another part of the same inexorable rite. I have to break that terrible chain. I want to think that my task is life and that my mission is not to prolong hatred but simply fill these pages . . .

Democratic values have never disappeared from Chile. We must not confuse the Chilean nation with the dictatorship that is ruling it now. Chile is its people, its land, its past, its present, and its future. Pinochet and the evil ones who are with him are an accident in the long life of my country. They will go into history as a misfortune that darkened the sky, but they will go.

Detente, sombra de mi amor esquivo, imagen del hechizo que más quiero, bella ilusión por quien alegre muero, dulce ficción por quien penosa vivo. SOR JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ

I think that the reason to live is to learn. We come here to experience through the body things that the spirit could not experience otherwise. So we need this body, and we have to transform this body into a temple of learning. (1997)

When Irina Bazili began working at Lark House in 2010, she was twenty-three years old but already had few illusions about life. (first line)

I visualized the book as a string of beads. Each anecdote, each character, was a separate bead strung on one string. That is why I wanted to close the book where it began, as if one had fastened the clasp of a necklace. I also wanted to show that life goes in a circle, that events are intertwined, and that history repeats itself. There is no beginning and no end.

El ardor de ese beso no los abandonó en muchos días y llenó de fantasmas delicados sus noches, dejando su recuerdo en la piel, como una quemadura. La alegría de ese encuentro los transportaba levitando por la calle, los impulsaba a reír sin causa aparente, los despertaba sobresaltados en la mitad de un sueño. Se tocaban los labios con las puntas de los dedos y evocaban exactamente la forma de la boca del otro.

He realized...that the loudest are the least sincere, that arrogance is a quality of the ignorant, and that flatterers tend to be vicious.

آه كم هي عنيدة الذاكرة وذاكرتي لا تتركني بسلام ، تملأ مخيلتي بصور ، بكلمات ، بألم وحب

Heroism is a badly remunerated occupation, and often it leads to an early end, which is why it appeals to fanatics or persons with an unhealthy fascination with death.

After a few months without writing, months I've lived turned outward... I fear going deaf, not being able to hear the silence.

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