Quotes from Isabel Allende

Everybody has losses - it's unavoidable in life. Sharing our pain is very healing.

My desk is like a 'U,' so I have my computer and lots of dictionaries because I write in Spanish and I live in English.

I speak English and Spanish. I write in Spanish; my books are published in English.

I have a foot here and a foot in some spirit world. There are many more layers to reality, and that permeates my life and my writing in a very natural way. I don't even think about it.

I was a very bad journalist. Awful. I would just invent everything. If I did an interview, I had a preconception of what that person should say and I would put my words in his mouth.

If I didn't write my soul would dry up and die.

For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.

For real change, we need feminine energy in the management of the world. We need a critical number of women in positions of power, and we need to nurture the feminine energy in men.

I love fiction because in fiction you go into the thoughts of people, the little people, the people who were defeated, the poor, the women, the children that are never in history books.

And I am not one of those women who trips twice over the same stone.

Nice people with common sense do not make interesting characters. They only make good former spouses.

Conceit is a privilege of the ignorant; the wise man is humble because he knows how little he knows.

I was such a sullen, angry, sad kid. I'm sure there are writers who have had happy childhoods, but what are you going to write about? No ghosts, no fear. I'm very happy that I had an unhappy and uncomfortable childhood.

Everything that has to do with food is sensuous. In the United States, however, we are eating all the time. We have a problem with obesity. And yet, we don't enjoy food that much.

I never thought that I would come to live in the United States. I was not pursuing the American dream.

A man does what he can; a woman does what a man cannot.

If this world is going to be a better place for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, it will be women who make it so.

In times of conflict, war, poverty or religious fundamentalism, women and children are the first and most numerous victims. Women need all their courage today.

The media could do a much better job, that's for sure, especially the media that targets women... Human rights? They couldn't care less!

?Courage is a virtue appreciated in a male but considered a defect in our gender. Bold women are a threat to a world that is badly out of balance, in favor of men.

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

Seated by her side in the narrow cabin, pressing cold compresses to her forehead and holding her while she vomited, he felt profoundly happy....

I can promise you that women working together – linked, informed and educated – can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.

My father left when I was three, and I have no memory of him. The most significant male figures in my life were my grandfather, in whose house I lived during the first 10 years of my childhood, and later my stepfather.