Isabel Allende Quotes - Page 8

I don't want to die in pain or in an undignified way, I don't want any of the people I love to die in, die painfully. But I'm aware of the fact that they may die before I do and I have to part with them and take the loss. The hardest thing of love is to let go. But I think I can get let go of almost anybody.

I love my dog unconditionally, but never the man I'm sleeping with.

When I fall in love I'm obsessed.

I'm open to love, and I think that I will fall in love with a wonderful man.

I felt an unrelenting restlessness. It was the first time I had ever experienced jealousy, and that emotion clung to my skin day and night like a dark stain, a contamination I could not shed; it became so unbearable that when finally I rid myself of it, I was freed forever of the desire to possess another person or the temptation ever to belong to anyone.

fiction happens in the belly, it doesn't happen in the brain.

far away from my country I would be like those trees they chop down at Christmastime, those poor rootless pines that last a little while and then die.

Literary characters, like my grandmother's apparitions, are fragile beings, easily frightened; they must be treated with care so they will feel comfortable in my pages

Heroism is a badly remunerated occupation, and often it leads to an early end, which is why it appeals to fanatics or persons with an unhealthy fascination with death.

That is the best part of writing: finding the hidden treasures, giving sparkle to worn out events, invigorating the tired soul with imagination, creating some kind of truth with many lies.

The slave who dances is free ... while he is dancing.

After fifty most of the bullshit is gone.

He had only to touch me to turn my tears into sighs and my anger to desire. How accomodating love is; it forgives everything.

In the United States, the fact that you can start again gives a lot of energy and strength and youth to this country. That is why it's so powerful in many ways, and so creative.

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.

Writers speak for those who are kept in silence

We live in an era where masses of people come and go across a hostile planet, desolate and violent. Refugees, emigrants, exiles, deportees. We are a tragic contingent.

I was born in the middle of the Second World War when the United States dropped their atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when millions of people were dying in concentration camps, when half the planet were colonies that belonged to empires. The word feminism didn't exist. And in my lifetime I have seen all these things improved, changed. We are more connected, more informed. We can fight against stuff together in ways we couldn't before.

The first few months of my life of every year are in total retreat. I don't see anybody except my husband and my dog, I don't talk to anybody, and I just write.

They could not understand the advantage of living contrary to their inclinations in this world in order to enjoy a hypothetical well-being in another.

My son, the Holy Church is on the right, but Jesus Christ was always on the left.

Two thirds of the work in the world is done by women. Women own 1 percent of the assets. Young women are sold into prostitution, forced labour, premature marriage, forced to have children they don't want or they can't support. They're abused, raped, beaten up. Domestic violence is supposed to be a cultural problem. They are the first victims of war, fundamentalism, conflict, recession. And young women who have access to education and health care and have resources think that everything was done, they don't have to worry.

The idea of the book ["The Japanese Lover"] came in a conversation that I had with a friend walking in the streets of New York. We were talking about our mothers, and I was telling her how old my mother was, and she was telling me about her mother. Her mother was Jewish, and she said that she was in a retirement home and that she had had a friend for 40 years that was a Japanese gardener. This person had been very important in my friend's upbringing.

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.

The fastest-growing population in the United States is the older people, because we are living much longer, healthier lives. The problem is, individuals often don't have the resources to take care of older people as they age. This is something that is happening, and we have to deal with it. It was happening also in my life.