Quotes from Isabel Allende

los humanos somos criaturas gregarias, que no estamos programados para la soledad, sino para dar y recibir.

The girl you were died; the potion of death was what all of us women swallow sooner or later. Have you noticed how at puberty the Amazon-like energy we are born with fades and we turn into doubt-filled creatures with clipped wings? The woman left trapped in the silo is also you, a prisoner of the restrictions of adult life. The female condition is a disgrace, Isabel, it's like having rocks tied to your ankles so you can't fly.

It's hard to make money working; and the harder the work, the worse the pay. It takes effort not to lose everything and end up on the street. It's easy, on the other hand, to get rich without producing anything, moving money from one place to another, speculating, taking advantage of stock opportunities, investing in the hard work of others.

The lack of a father leaves a hole in a woman's heart, Lucia. A girl needs to feel she is protected; she needs masculine energy to develop trust in men and later to be able to give herself in love.

She awoke from a long childhood in which she had always been protected and surrounded by attention and comforts, with no responsibilities.

The concept that you could possess land was as unfathomable to them as that of dividing up the sea.

Childhood is a naturally unhappy period of our existence, Lillian. It was Walt Disney who invented the notion that it has to be happy, simply to make money.

El espíritu se le fue desprendiendo en la misma medida en que le germinaron las alas

la mujer inventó el amor sin compañero. Aventurándose sola en territorios alucinantes, con la audacia de quien no conoce los riesgos

He understood then that all his exploits as a reporter, the feats that had won him such recognition and fame, were merely an attempt to keep his most ancient fears at bay, a stratagem for taking refuge behind a lens to test whether reality was more tolerable from that perspective.

although they knew this was a mere formality. Victor felt relieved: if one lives long enough, circles close.

Feminism, like the ocean, is fluid, powerful, deep, and encompasses the infinite complexity of life; it moves in waves, currents, tides, and sometimes in storms. Like the ocean, feminism never stays quiet.

the heart is like a box; if it is filled with rubbish, there is no space for other things.

On that long journey she wept all the tears stored in her soul, leaving none in reserve for later sorrows.

Of all fragrances, the sweetest is that of virtue.

Cada instante desaparece en un soplo y al punto se convierte en pasado, la realidad es efímera y migratoria, pura añoranza

Mediante la fotografía y la palabra escrita intento desesperadamente vencer la condición fugaz de mi existencia, atrapar los momentos antes de que se desvanezcan, despejar la confusión de mi pasado.

She accused him of having grandiose ideas and sloppy habits, a fatal combination for a writer.

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...That's why my Grandmother Clara wrote in her notebooks, in order to see things in their true dimension

Aprendió a masticar sus penas sola y con dignidad, convencida de que a nadie le importan los problemas ajenos y que los dolores callados acaban por diluirse.

The deep Chile of the fascists had always been there, beneath the surface, just waiting to emerge. It was the triumph of the arrogant Right, the defeat of the people who believed in that utopian revolution.

La Lowell wanted nothing; she lived for the day, unfettered, free, fearless; she wasn't afraid of poverty, loneliness, or infirmity. She accepted everything with good grace; for her, life was an entertaining voyage that inevitably led to old age and death. There was no point in accumulating wealth since in the end, she maintained, we all go to the grave in our birthday suit.

El hombre del amor calcinante, de los inventos eróticos, de la risa, las bromas y los juegos entre las sábanas, de la urgencia y la voracidad y la alegría, de las confidencias susurradas en la pausa entre dos abrazos, de los besos interminables y la intimidad más delirante, ese hombre sólo existía para ella.

Entonces se acariciaron titubeantes, reconociendose, tanteando el alma para asegurarse de que no estaban equivocados.