Quotes from Isabel Allende

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?

Teresa said that until men gave birth and put up with husbands, as women do, they should not have an opinion - let alone decide on - abortion and divorce. She didn't believe that men had the right to an opinion, much less to pass laws on the female body, since they'd never know the exhaustion of gestation, the pain of labor, and the eternal bondage of motherhood.

Si fuera capaz de exteriorizar mis sentimientos, tal vez sufriría menos, pero se me quedan atorados adentro, como un inmenso bloque de hielo y pueden pasar años antes que el hielo empiece a derretirse.

Nadie sabe para quién escribe. Cada libro es un mensaje lanzado en una botella al mar con la esperanza de que arribe a otra orilla.

It is common knowledge that no man that women flock to boasts of his conquests. Those who do, lie.

Until a few months ago we had a code of honor, and even the worst ruffians behaved with decency. You could leave your gold in a tent with no guard and no one would touch it, but now all that has changed. The law of the jungle rules, the only ideology is greed. Don't let yourself be parted from your weapons, and always travel in pairs or groups, because this is a land of thieves.

Her Uncle Jaime felt that people never read what did not interest them and that if it interested them that meant they were sufficiently mature to read it.

Lo que se olvida es como si nunca hubiera sucedido

I have a hundred-year-old aunt who aspires to sainthood, and whose only wish has been to go into the convent, but no congregation, not even the Little Sisters of Charity, could tolerate her for more than a few weeks, so the family has had to look after her. Believe me, there is nothing so insufferable as a saint, I wouldn't sic one on my worst enemy.

La vida no es una foto, en que uno ordena las cosas para que se vean bien y luego fija la imagen para la posteridad; es un proceso sucio, desordenado, rápido, lleno de imprevistos. Lo único seguro es que todo cambia.

La realidad es que cada uno es responsable de su propia vida. Nacemos con ciertas cartas del naipe, y con ellas jugamos nuestro juego; a algunos les tocan malas cartas y lo pierden todo, pero otros juegan magistralmente con esas mismas cartas y triunfan.

At times I felt that the universe fabricated from the power of imagination had stronger and more lasting contours than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around me.

Sadness and boredom were more bearable than the effort of living a normal life. Perhaps the idea of death began to hover over her during that period, as a kind of higher order of lassitude in which she would not have to move the blood in her veins or the air in her lungs; her repose would be absolute- not to think, not to feel, not to be.

Just as Daniel Balalcazar said, it makes no sense to suffer in advance a misfortune that may never occur.

Because I have time to spare, and for the first time in my life nobody expects anything of me. I don't have to prove anything, I'm not rushing everywhere; each day is a gift I enjoy to the fullest.

I've been so thoroughly incorporated into the California culture that I practice meditation and go to a therapist, even though I always set a trap: during my meditation I invent stories to keep from being bored, and in therapy I invent stories to keep from boring the psychologist.

Los hombres hacen lo que pueden, las mujeres hacen lo que los hombres no pueden.

era apenas la suma de dos soledades y de muchas ausencias.

But that's how nostalgia is: a slow dance in a large circle. Memories don't organize themselves chronologically, they're like smoke, changing, ephemeral, and if they're not written down they fade into oblivion.

Nations should be governed by a council of learned men who must answer to the people for their actions.

If, for example, I saw my grandparents or my daughter for an instant, would I recognize them? Probably not, because in looking so hard for a way to keep them alive, remembering them in the most minimal details, I have been changing them, adorning them with qualities they may not have had. I have given them a destiny much more complex than the ones they lived.

I especially like your autumn trees, gracefully letting their leaves fall. That is how I would like to shed my own leaves in this autumn of life, easily and elegantly. Why be so attached to what we are bound to lose anyway? I suppose I mean youth, which has been so present in our conversations.

He had a principle: if you lend money and never see the person again, that's money well spent.

Prométeme que siempre te vas a querer a ti misma como te quiero yo, Maya