Quotes from Isabel Allende

Life is long, and the world is large. It is all a question of taking a chance.

You are going to be judged harshly because success in women is not easily forgiven.

He said that knowledge was of little use without wisdom, and that there was no wisdom without spirituality, and that true spirituality always included service to others. As he explained many times, the essence of a good physician consisted of a capacity for compassion and a sense of the ethical, without which qualities the sacred art of healing degenerated into simple charlatanism.

My heart is broken, he told himself. It was at that moment he understood the profound meaning of that common phrase: he thought he heard the sound of glass breaking and felt that the essence of his being was pouring out until he was empty, with no memory of the past, no awareness of the present, no hope for the future.

Entonces dejé de examinarme en el espejo para compararme con las mujeres perfectas del cine y las revistas y decidí que era bella por la simple razón de que tenía ganas de serlo.

Zacharie did not learn of the sorrow his wife was living becasue she was careful to hide it. Tete kept that first love, the stromngest in her life, a secret. She mentioned it only rarely because she could not offer Zacharie a passion of the same intensity; the relationship they shared was genntle and free of urgency.

Words are free, she used to say, and she appropriated them; they were all hers. She sowed in my mind the idea that reality is not only what we see on the surface; it has a magical dimension as well and, if we so desire, it is legitimate to enhance it and color it to make our journey through life less trying.

Qué hacer con esta felicidad que nos llega sin motivo especial, esta felicidad que no requiere nada para existir?

The last time I was in Chile, I was hypnotized by a friend who is studying to be a curandero, a healer, who led me back through several incarnations. It wasn't easy to return to the present, however, since my friend hadn't reached that part of the course, but the experiment was well worth the effort because I discovered that in former lives I was not Genghis Khan, as my mother believes.

Aquí la locura se repartió entre todos y no sobró nada para tener nuestro propio loco de remate.

The advantage of being lovers is that we have to work hard at our relationship, because everything conspires to drive us apart. Our decision to be together has to be renewed again and again; that keeps us on our toes.

El dolor es inevitable, pero el sufrimiento es optativo.»

The house was a vast labyrinth of books. Volumes were stacked from floor to ceiling on every wall, dark, crackling, redolent of leather bindings, smooth to the touch, with their gold titles and translucent gilt-edged pages and delicate typography.

All husbands are boring... No woman with ounce of sense gets married to be entertained, she marries to be maintained.

Esos desaires no me quitan el sueño: no tengo que agradar a todo el mundo, sólo a quienes en verdad me importan, que no son muchos.

People do not belong to others, either. How can the huincas buy and sell people if they do not own them. Sometimes the boy went two or three days without speaking a word, surly, and not eating, and when asked what was the matter, the answer was always the same: There are content days and there are sad days. Each person is a master of his silence.

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

La discusión se prolongaba y ambos se perdían en una oratoria confusa que los dejaba agotados, acusándose mutuamente de ser más testarudos que una mula, pero al final se daban las buenas noches con un beso y quedaban ambos con la sensación de que el otro era un ser maravilloso.

El orgullo de quien se cree hermosa daba a su andar un ritmo insolente.

Se reunían un par de veces al año en cualquier punto del mapa para vivir unos días de ilusión y regresar luego con el cuerpo agradecido y el alma alborozada.

Affection is like the noonday sun; it does not need the presence of another to be manifest.

How exuberant and boisterous the universe is, Alma! It turns and turns, and the only constant is everything changes. It is a mystery we can only appreciate out of stillness. I'm living through a very interesting stage. My spirit contemplates the changes in my body with fascination, but this contemplation is not from a distance, but from within. My spirit and my body are together in this process.

Al nacer Rosa era blanca, lisa, sin arrugas, como una muñeca de loza, con el cabello verde y los ojos amarillos, la criatura más hermosa que había nacido en la tierra desde los tiempos de pecado original.

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.