Quotes by "Isabel Allende"

— Fericirea nu e pentru toţi, Cathy. — Ba sigur că e! Toţi ne naştem fericiţi. Pe drum, viaţa ni se mai murdăreşte, dar putem să o spălăm. Iar fericirea nu e exuberantă şi zgomotoasă, precum plăcerea sau bucuria. E tăcută, liniştită, suavă, e o stare interioară de satisfacţie ce începe prin a te iubi pe tine însuţi.

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. ... That's 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 [...]

Lanzarme con otro libro es tan grave como enamorarme, un impulso alocado que exige dedicación fanática. Con cada uno, como ante un nuevo amor, me pregunto si me alcanzarán las fuerzas para escribirlo y si acaso semejante proyecto vale la pena: hay demasiadas páginas inútiles y demasiados amoríos frustrados.

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

In 2011, I announced that I was going to retire, and my agent panicked. So she says: 'No, no, no. You have to write a book with your husband.' My husband is a writer of crime novels. His name is William Gordon. And so I had to accommodate to his style because that's what he writes. So we decided we'd give it a try. Well, we almost divorced.

I confess that I am a messy, disorganized and impatient reader: if the book doesn't grab me in the first 40 pages, I abandon it. I have piles of half-read books waiting for me to get acute hepatitis or some other serious condition that would force me to rest so that I could read more.

A memoir is my version of events. My perspective. I choose what to tell and what to omit. I choose the adjectives to describe a situation, and in that sense, I'm creating a form of fiction.

I want to have an epic life. I want to tell my life with big adjectives. I want to forget all the grays in between, and remember the highlights and the dark moments.

Heart is what drives us and determines our fate. That is what I need for my characters in my books: a passionate heart. I need mavericks, dissidents, adventurers, outsiders and rebels, who ask questions, bend the rules and take risks.

I don't want an uneventful and safe life, I prefer an adventurous one.

I have travelled all over the world and one thing that amazes me is that I can communicate with people. My story may be different but emotionally we are all the same.

We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward. In times of tragedy, of war, of necessity, people do amazing things. The human capacity for survival and renewal is awesome.

I am an American citizen and it is my home now. I like the U.S.A., which is not a place too many people have liked since Bush. The U.S. has a young population, and everything can change within a year.

I'm a writer. In Latin America, they say I'm a Latin-American writer because I also write in Spanish and my books are translated, but I am an American citizen and my books are published here, so I'm also an American writer.

I have become an American citizen, and I love this country. I think that this country has incredible potential for goodness, an incredible possibility for doing the wrong thing, too.

One of the characteristics of North American culture is that you can always start again. You can always move forward, cross a border of a state or a city or a county, and move West, most of the time West. You leave behind guilt, past traditions, memories.

Americans have a warrior's mentality, most of them. That's how this society was built. The fact that you own a gun and shoot to defend your life is a very American way of thinking.

The fact that you own a gun and shoot to defend your life is a very American way of thinking.