Quotes from Isabel Allende

El funcionario público debe comprender desde su primer día en la oficina que cualquier amago de iniciativa será el fin de su carrera, porque no está allí para hacer mérito, sino para alcanzar dignamente su nivel de incompetencia.

Apa yang tidak kugoreskan di atas kertas akan terhapus oleh waktu.

Durante un interminable momento él las observó inmóvil hasta comprenderlo todo, amor, y verla atada con las correas sobre la parrilla eléctrica, y entonces pudieron abrazarse y llorar, hambrientos de pactos y de confidencias, de palabras prohibidas, de promesas de mañana, compartiendo, por fin, el más recóndito secreto

Conociendo bien su destino, se cuidaba de las mujeres y a lo largo de su vida huyó de todo contacto sentimental, secando su corazón para el amor y limitándose a encuentros rápidos para burlar la soledad

Sabes, Leticia? Eres la persona más alegre que he conocido, todo te divierte, cocinas cantando y pasas la aspiradora con ritmo de rumba. —Así somos los salvadoreños. Antes decían que El Salvador era el país de la sonrisa, pero supongo que desde la guerra civil eso de andar sonriendo se usa menos.

Why be so attached to what we are bound to lose anyway?

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.

Y ejecutados los había por docenas de miles; tanta sangre habría de correr, que al año siguiente los campesinos aseguraban que las cebollas salían rojas y encontraban dientes humanos dentro de las patatas.

También sabía que amaría a aquella niña durante toda su existencia, que ese amanecer perduraría en su recuerdo y que sería lo último que vería en el momento de morir. Ese

No, calladita no estás más guapa. Tú eres preciosa cuando luchas, cuando peleas por lo tuyo, cuando no te callas y tus palabras muerden, cuando abres la boca y todo arde a tu alrededor. No, calladita no estás más guapa, sino un poco más muerta, y si algo sé sobre ti es que no he visto a nadie, jamás, con tantas ganas de vivir. Gritando. MIGUEL GANE, «Arde»

hitchhiking and sleeping in cemeteries. (He explained to me that they're very safe, no one goes there at night.)

shared pain is more bearable.

Si me quieres escribir, / ya sabes mi paradero: / Tercera Brigada Mixta, / primera línea de fuego».

The tradition of industrious women is fundamental in my country, where sloth is a male privilege. It is forgivable in men, just as alcoholism is tolerated among them, because it is assumed that these are unavoidable biological characteristics: if you're born that way, you're born that way. . . . That isn't true of women, you understand.

He had a booming laugh that bubbled up from the bowels of the earth and shook him from head to toe.

My Nini wanted to get another dog, as much like Daisy as possible, but my Popo said that it was not a question of replacing her, but of trying to live without her. "I can't, Popo. I loved her so much!" I sobbed inconsolably. "That affection is inside you, Maya, not in Daisy. You can give it to other animals, and what's left over you can give to me

you don't need photos to remember the people who matter to you.

Victor did not see death as an irremediable separation. He imagined his wife traveling ahead through sidereal space, where perhaps the souls of the dead ended up, while he was waiting his turn to join her, more curious than concerned. He would be there with his brother

He's a woman!" he shouted, horrified. Padre Mendoza and the others came running up, only to stand and stare, mute with amazement, at the virginal breasts of the warrior. "It's going to be much more difficult to kill him now," Padre Mendoza sighed finally.

Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change," Clara had said.

I didn't get to prepare myself as well as I would've liked, and now there's a lady, who must be death, sitting at the foot of my bed, motioning for me to follow her. I can't distinguish clearly between night and day, and it doesn't matter, because pain and memory aren't measured with clocks. The morphine puts me to sleep and transports me to the dimension of dreams and visions.

the capital city had grown in alarming fashion: cardboard walls, tin roofs, people in rags clearly visible along the road from the airport. Since this made a very bad impression on visitors, for a long time the solution was to put up walls to hide them. As one politician said, 'Where there is poverty, hide it.

Gringos invented two terms that are untranslatable into most languages: "snack" and "quickie," to refer to eating standing up and loving on the run . . . that, too, sometimes standing up.

This was a matter of some small group of guerrillas in some distant caves, a primitive, fanatical, and desperate people who didn't have the resources to intimidate the United States.