Isabel Allende Quotes

Chilean writer (born 1942)

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Isabel Allende (born August 2, 1942) is a Chilean writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the genre magical realism, is known for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus, 1982) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias, 2002), which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called "the world's most widely read Spanish-language author." In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize. President Barack Obama awarded her the 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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Alternative Names: Isabel Allende Llona

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Exert some independence; you're not a little girl. You can't let anyone else decide things for you. You have to take care of yourself in this world, she said.
I've never forgotten those words.

قبر مبهر!، انه الشيء الوحيد الذي يبقى، فبعد مئة سنة سيتمكن زائروا المقبرة من الاعجاب بقبري و سيتخيلون أنني عشت حياة طيبة

Todos tenemos demonios en los rincones oscuros del alma, pero si los sacamos a la luz, los demonios se achican, se debilitan, se callan y al fin nos dejan en paz.

la edad, por sí sola, no hace a nadie mejor ni más sabio, sólo acentúa lo que cada uno ha sido siempre.

Cada uno escoge el tono para contar su propia historia; quisiera optar por la claridad durable de una impresión en platino, pero nada en mi destino posee esa luminosa cualidad. Vivo entre difusos matices, velados misterios, incertidumbres; el tono para contar mi vida se ajusta más al de un retrato en sepia...

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

El pasado y el futuro eran parte de la misma cosa y la realidad del presente era un caleidoscopio de espejos desordenados, donde todo podía ocurrir.

"...We are all born happy. Life gets us dirty along the way, but we can clean it up. Happiness is not exuberant or noisy, like pleasure or joy; it’s silent, tranquil, and gentle; it’s a feeling of satisfaction inside that begins with self-love..." (p194)

La muerte no existe, la gente sólo muere cuando la olvidan; si puedes recordarme, siempre estaré contigo.

Happiness is slippery, it slithers away between your fingers, but problems are something you can hold on to, they’ve got handles, they’re rough and hard

Memory is fiction. We select the brightest and the darkest, ignoring what we are ashamed of, and so embroider the broad tapestry of our lives. (p433)

Perhaps we are in this world to search for love, find it and lose it, again and again. With each love, we are born anew, and with each love that ends we collect a new wound. I am covered with proud scars.

Before you conquer the mountain, you must learn to overcome your fear.

The fear is not real, Dil Bahadur; it is only in your mind, like all other things. Our thoughts form what we believe to be reality.

For me, feminism is a fight that men and women must wage for a more educated world, one in which the basic inequality between the sexes will be eliminated. We have to change the patriarchal, hierarchical, authoritarian, repressive societies that have been marked by the religions and the laws that we have had to live with for thousands of years. This goes a lot deeper than not wearing a bra, or the sexual and cultural revolutions. It is a revolution that must go to the heart of the world, and that all of us must fight, women and men alike. Both sexes are on a ship without a course, and we must give it a new direction.