Quotes by Isabel Allende

I get up every morning early, when the sky is red, and write for 10 hours.

Women have always been courageous... They are always fearless when protecting their children and in the last century they have been fearless in the fight for their rights.

Mens memoirs are about answers; womens memoirs are about questions. Most male authors want to look good in their memoirs and have a place in posterity, while most women know that posterity is what happens when you no longer care. Women want to connect with others here and now; they couldnt care less about legacy!

What I fear most is power with impunity. I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse.

Give, give, give - what is the point of having experience, knowledge or talent if I dont give it away? Of having stories if I dont tell them to others? Of having wealth if I dont share it? I dont intend to be cremated with any of it! It is in giving that I connect with others, with the world and with the divine.

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.

I read on my iPad when I travel. I listen to audiobooks in the car. I read books in my bedroom, where I have a comfortable couch, a lamp and two dogs to keep me warm.

Feminism is dated? Yes, for privileged women like my daughter and all of us here today, but not for most of our sisters in the rest of the world who are still forced into premature marriage, prostitution, forced labor - they have children that they dont want or they cannot feed.

Theres basically an element of fiction in everything you remember. Imagination and memory are almost the same brain processes. When I write fiction, I know that Im using a bunch of lies that Ive made up to create some form of truth. When I write a memoir, Im using true elements to create something that will always be somehow fictionalized.

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

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

“At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another woman, who kept her notebooks so that one day I could use them. 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. ... Thats why my Grandmother Clara wrote in her notebooks, in order to see things in their true dimension and to defy her own poor memory.”

“The calendar is a human invention; time does not exist on the spiritual level.”

“[D]as Gedächtnis [ist] schwach und der Lauf eines Lebens kurz und alles [geschieht] so rasch, dass wir den Zusammenhang zwischen den Ereignissen nicht mehr sehen, die Folgen der Taten nicht mehr ermessen können, wir glauben an die Fiktion der Zeit, an Gegenwart, Vergangenheit und Zukunft, aber es kann auch sein, dass alles gleichzeitig geschieht [...]”

“...La ley natural del universo es la entropía, todo tiende al desorden, a romperse, a dispersarse, la gente se pierde, miren cuántos se perdieron en La Retirada, los sentimientos se destiñen y el olvido se desliza en las vidas como neblina. Se requiere una voluntad heroica para mantener todo en su sitio.”

“How many times have I told you not to believe everything you hear? Seek truth for yourself.”

“Silence before being born, silence after death: life is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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”