Quotes from Isabel Allende

She tried to understand what it meant to carry winter on your back, to hesitate over every step, to confuse words you don't hear properly, to have the impression that the rest of the world is going about in a great rush; the emptiness, frailty, fatigue, and indifference toward everything not directly related to you, even children and grandchildren, whose absence was not felt as it once had been, and whose names you had to struggle to remember.

As well as walking erect and disguising his tiredness, he also tried to avoid other symptoms of old age: meanness, mistrust, ill temper, resentment, and bad habits such as no longer shaving every day, repeating the same stories over and over, talking about himself, his ailments, or money.

We have to consider violence against women for what it really is: the greatest crisis that faces humanity.

La felicidad no es exuberante ni bulliciosa, como el placer o la alegría. Es silenciosa, tranquila, suave, es como un estado interno de satisfacción que empieza por amarse a sí mismo. Tú deberías quererte como te quiero yo y como te quieren todos los que te conocen...

Con la edad se adquiere cierta humildad, Alexander. Mientras más años cumplo, más ignorante me siento. Sólo los jóvenes tienen explicación para todo. A tu edad se puede ser arrogante y no importa mucho hacer el ridículo —replicó ella secamente.

Estas largas separaciones son peligrosas, el amor resbala por arenas inciertas.

An invisible border arose between the parts of the house occupied by Esteban Trueba and those occupied by his wife. In response to Clara's imagination and the requirements of the moment, the noble, seigniorial architecture began sprouting all sorts of extra little rooms, staircases, turrets, and terraces...the big house on the corner soon came to resemble a labyrinth.

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 anywhere; each day is a gift I enjoy to the fullest.

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—as the three Mora sisters said, who could see the spirits of all eras mingled in space.

Los chilenos veneran al Papa, pero no le hacen caso en asuntos sexuales y sus concecuencias, porque un anciano celibe, de buen pasar economico, que no ha trabajado en su vida, poco sabe de eso.

And along the streets the blood of the children flowed simply, like the blood of children…Come and see the blood in the streets, come and see the blood in the streets.

Word by word I have created the person I am and the invented country in which I live.

El feminismo no me alcanzó para repartir las tareas domésticas, en verdad esa idea no me pasó por la cabeza, creía que la liberación consistía en salir al mundo y echarme encima los deberes masculinos, pero no pensé que también se trataba de delegar parte de mi carga. El

They taught using an Italian system of experimental education in which the students did whatever the fuck we wanted.

A public official must understand from his first day in office that any show of initiative will signal the end of his career because he isn't there to be meritorious but to reach his level of incompetence with dignity.

Saboreaban la amargura de una despedida que presentían, pero que todavía podían confundir con una reconciliación.

I called him Grandfather, because according to him you do not have to be of the same blood or same tribe to be a member of the same family, but in truth I should have called him Maman. He was the only mother I ever knew.

Barrabás llegó a la familia por vía marítima.

Since when has a man not beaten his wife? If he doesn't beat her, it's either because he doesn't love her or because he isn't a real man. Since when is a man's paycheck or the fruit of the earth or what the chickens lay shared between them, when everybody knows he is the one in charge? Since when has a woman ever done the same things as a man? Besides, she was born with a wound between her legs and without balls, right, Senora Clara?

He did not know that she had seen her own destiny, that she had summoned him with the power of her thought, and that she had already made up her mind to marry without love.

The reality is that everyone is responsible for their own life. We're dealt certain cards at birth, and we play our hand; some of us lose, but others may play skillfully from the same bad hand and triumph. Our cards determine who we are: age, gender, race, family, nationality, etc., and we can't change them, only play them to the best of our abilities. The game is marked by challenges and chances, strategizing and cheating.

Como la aguja de una brújula apunta siempre al norte, así el dedo acusador de un hombre apunta siempre a una mujer

No. Charity, like Socialism, is an invention of the weak to exploit the strong and bring them to their knees.        I don't believe in your theory of the weak and the strong, Jaime replied.        That's the way it is in nature. We live in a jungle.

Olía a yerbas y tenía la piel fría. Supo que amarla era su destino inexorable.