110+ Isabel Allende Quotes On Writing, Imaginative And Emotional

Isabel Allende is a Chilean writer and the world's most widely read Spanish-language author. She is best known for her novels, which often contain elements of magical realism. Allende's works have been translated into more than 27 languages and have sold more than 74 million copies. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Isabel Allende on love, life, writing.

Top 10 Isabel Allende Quotes

1. There is no light without shadow, just as there is no happiness without pain.
2. Aphrodite is about lust and gluttony - the only two sins worth committing, in my opinion.
3. I can promise you that women working together - linked, informed and educated - can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.
4. 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.
5. Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.
6. There is no death, daughter. People die only when we forget them,' my mother explained shortly before she left me. 'If you can remember me, I will be with you always.
7. Heart is what drives us and determines our fate.
8. You only have what you give. It’s by spending yourself that you become rich.
9. 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.
10. Silence before being born, silence after death: life is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences.

Isabel Allende Short Quotes

• We only have what we give.
• The longer I live, the more uninformed I feel. Only the young have an explanation for everything.
• The two moments are much alike: birth and death are made of the same fabric.
• Peace requires everyone to be in the circle - wholeness, inclusion.
• What I fear most is power with impunity. I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse.
• True friendship resists time, distance and silence.
• With women the best aphrodisiac is words.
• There is no death, daughter. People die only when we forget them.
• Affection is like the noonday sun; it does not need the presence of another to be manifest.
• Photographs deceive time, freezing it on a piece of cardboard where the soul is silent.

Isabel Allende Quotes About Love

Friendship is all about trust and sharing. Passionate and romantic love is all about sex and emotions. You have to try to combine those, I think. The great marriages, the great couples I know, have both. — Isabel Allende

Accept the children the way we accept trees—with gratitude, because they are a blessing—but do not have expectations or desires. You don’t expect trees to change, you love them as they are. — Isabel Allende

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. — Isabel Allende

When you make an omelet, as when you make love, affection counts for more than technique. — Isabel Allende

I met a guy, very exotic to me - he was blonde with blue eyes - and I just had a fling that turned out to be love. I moved to San Francisco to spend a week with him and get him out of my system; I'm still here 26 years later. — Isabel Allende

People are afraid of falling in love because they don't want to suffer. — Isabel Allende

Having a point to start is important. You know that when you decide to write something it's like a commitment. It's like falling in love. — Isabel Allende

When a man's earning his living doing things he doesn't like, he feels like a slave; when he's doing what he loves, he feels like a prince. — Isabel Allende

Love is a free contract that begins with a spark and can end the same way. — Isabel Allende

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

Isabel Allende Quotes About Life

You spend the first part of your life collecting things ... and the second half getting rid of them. — Isabel Allende

At the most difficult moments of my life, when it seemed that every door was closed to me, the taste of those apricots comes back to comfort me with the notion that abundance is always within reach, if only one knows how to find it. — Isabel Allende

Life is very mysterious and there are many things we don't know. And there are elements of magic realism in every culture, everywhere. It's just accepting that we don't know everything and everything is possible. — Isabel Allende

She sowed in my mind the idea that reality is not only what we see on the surface; it has a magical dimension as well and, if we so desire, it is legitimate to enhance it and color it to make our journey through life less trying. — Isabel Allende

I feel that my life and therefore my writing accept the possibility of all the mystery. Everything we don't know; everything that can possibly happen. — Isabel Allende

A memoir forces me to stop and remember carefully. It is an exercise in truth. In a memoir, I look at myself, my life, and the people I love the most in the mirror of the blank screen. In a memoir, feelings are more important than facts, and to write honestly, I have to confront my demons. — Isabel Allende

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. — Isabel Allende

I think that my life changed at 50. Many things happened. Menopause, the end of youth and my daughter died that year after being a whole year in a coma. So I think that I changed and I became an elder at 50. — Isabel Allende

We don't have an explanation for everything that happens. We don't control almost anything. And if we are not open to that mystery, life becomes so small. — Isabel Allende

When I started working in a feminist feminine magazine all my life was about rebelling against male authority, which is authority in general is male, so it was rebelling against everything. Everything that was around me made me angry. — Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende Quotes About Writing

All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom. — Isabel Allende

Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn’t show up invited, eventually she just shows up — Isabel Allende

I'm aware of the mystery around us, so I write about coincidences, premonitions, emotions, dreams, the power of nature, magic. — Isabel Allende

All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. — Isabel Allende

The first two, three, four weeks are wasted. I just show up in front of the computer. Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn't show up invited, eventually she just shows up. — Isabel Allende

Write what should not be forgotten. — Isabel Allende

If you write nonfiction, a historical account of what really happened, first of all, it's always White men who do that and you don't have the voices that are really interesting to me, of the people who are not sheltered by the big umbrella of the establishment. — Isabel Allende

I do not put myself in a box and say, for instance, I'm writing post-colonial literature. I don't know what I'm writing. That's the business of professors and critics. My job is to tell a story, and that's it. — Isabel Allende

No complaining about how hard it is to write, we are all so, so lucky to write, to sit down, inside, and write words on paper. There is no greater freedom, no greater good, nothing that brings more joy. — Isabel Allende

I'm not a fan of mysteries, so to prepare for this experience of writing a mystery I started reading the most successful ones in the market in 2012. And I realized I cannot write that kind of book. It's too gruesome, too violent, too dark; there's no redemption there. — Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende Quotes About Imaginative

if we don't begin by imagining the perfect society, how shall we create one? — Isabel Allende

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. — Isabel Allende

At times I felt that the universe fabricated from the power of the imagination had stronger and more lasting contours than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around me. — Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende Quotes About World

In my lifetime, the world has become better, not worse. And the world is moving, very slowly but surely with more democracy and more liberal way of thinking, more inclusion and more diversity. — Isabel Allende

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 don't want or they cannot feed. — Isabel Allende

I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet, so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me. — Isabel Allende

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. — Isabel Allende

Although women do two-thirds of the world's labor, they own less than one percent of the world's assets. — Isabel Allende

The world is a very unjust, unfair place and we have to live with that. Historically, there is impunity for most crimes. — Isabel Allende

The world starts to exist, for Americans, when we are in conflict with a place. And then all of a sudden, Afghanistan pops up on the TV screen and it becomes a place. And it exists for three weeks and then it disappears into thin air. — Isabel Allende

The most poor and backward areas in the world are those in which women are subjugated and exploited. Improving the situation of the woman improves the family, the community, and by extension the whole country. — Isabel Allende

I come from the so-called Third World (what is the Second)? — Isabel Allende

We want a world where life is preserved, and the quality of life is enriched for everybody, not only for the privileged. — Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende Quotes About Characters

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. — Isabel Allende

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

I'm always following the characters and I'm always interested in what happens to them, but what happens to them is conditioned by the circumstances in which they live. — Isabel Allende

When I write fiction, I never try to deliver a message; I just want to tell a story. But I admit that I want the story to be memorable and the characters to touch the reader's heart. — Isabel Allende

My books are based on emotions, feelings, relationships. In these areas women are experts, so it's not strange that the main characters of my novels are females. — Isabel Allende

Humanity has this need to hear stories because they connect us with other people, they teach us about our own feelings. We feel less lonely when we see other people going through the same things, even if they're fictional characters. — Isabel Allende

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 — Isabel Allende

What I need for my characters in my books [is] a passionate heart. I need mavericks, dissidents, adventurers, outsiders and rebels, who ask questions, bend the rules and take risks. — Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende Quotes About Heart

The names of persons and living creatures demand respect, because when we speak to them we touch their heart and become a part of thier life force. — Isabel Allende

There is room in the human heart for all the divinities. — Isabel Allende

...a fixation is very stubborn: it burrows into the brain and breaks the heart. There are many fixations, but love is the worst. — Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende Quotes About Books

In my book tours I get to meet an audience every night. And I see that there are mostly young people, and there are a lot of more men than before, but always young, I don't get older men. As I'm getting older, my audience gets younger! — Isabel Allende

The one that came really easy was the Japanese lover, because he's like a ghost in the book. He's always in the background like a spirit, like a shadow, almost. There's a very delicate line there. — Isabel Allende

More and more books are published every year. If people were not reading them, they wouldn't be published. We are in a different moment. We are now reading electronic books or whatever else, but people are still reading, and people still need stories. — Isabel Allende

I should say that I'm not conscious of any particular style or any particular literary device when I am writing. I have written 22 books, and they are all very different. I have tried all kinds of genres. — Isabel Allende

A book is not an end in itself; it is only a way to touch someone - a bridge extended across a space of loneliness and obscurity - and sometimes it is a way of winning other people to our causes. — Isabel Allende

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. — Isabel Allende

You write a book and it's like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean. You don't know if it will ever reach any shores. And there, you see, sometimes it falls in the hands of the right person. — Isabel Allende

The fact people think that when you sell a lot of books you are not a serious writer is a great insult to the readership. I get a little angry when people try to say such a thing. — Isabel Allende

I don't read thrillers, romance or mystery, and I don't read self-help books because I don't believe in shortcuts and loopholes. — Isabel Allende

I don't think of literature as an end in itself. It's just a way of communicating something. — Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende Famous Quotes And Sayings

...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. — Isabel Allende

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. — Isabel Allende

As my Popo used to say, life is a tapestry we weave day by day with threads of different colors, some heavy and dark, others thin and bright, all the threads having their uses. The stupid things I did are already in the tapestry, indelible, but I’m not going to be weighed down by them till I die. What’s done is done; I have to look ahead. — Isabel Allende

We need a global approach to this from all sides. We need to educate people, we need the scientists to create new technologies, we need the engineers to create the networks, we need every human being to be aware of how precious water is and save it. Everybody has to be involved in a very firm and assertive way. — Isabel Allende

How can one not speak about war, poverty, and inequality when people who suffer from these afflictions don't have a voice to speak? — Isabel Allende

My name is Eva, which means 'life,' according to a book of names my mother consulted. I was born in the back room of a shadowy house, and grew up amidst ancient furniture, books in Latin, and human mummies, but none of those things made me melancholy, because I came into the world with a breath of the jungle in my memory. — Isabel Allende

The source of my difficulties has always been the same: an inability to accept what to others seems natural, and an irresistible tendency to voice opinions no one wants to hear . . . — Isabel Allende

I try desperately to conquer the transitory nature of my existence, to trap moments before they evenesce, to untangle the confusion of my past. Every instant disappears in a breath and immediately becomes the past; reality is ephemeral and changing, pure longing. — Isabel Allende

My female protagonist will not be this promiscuous, beautiful, dark-haired, thin lady. It will be a plump, blond, healer and so forth. — Isabel Allende

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. — Isabel Allende

Giving women education, work, the ability to control their own income, inherit and own property, benefits the society. If a woman is empowered, her children and her family will be better off. If families prosper, the village prospers, and eventually so does the whole country. — Isabel Allende

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

I had a very rough childhood and not a happy one and by age 15 I was an old person in many ways. I knew that I had to take care of myself, I um and I always did. — Isabel Allende

I seek truth and beauty in the transparency of an autumn leaf, in the perfect form of a seashell on the beach, in the curve of a woman's back, in the texture of an ancient tree trunk, but also in the elusive forms of reality. — Isabel Allende

I don't want posterity, I don't want anybody to remember me in any way. I don't care about that because I'll be dead. I think the spirit will move to some other state. — Isabel Allende

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. — Isabel Allende

She was considered timid and morose. Only in the country, her skin tanned by the sun and her belly full of ripe fruit, running through the fields with Pedro Tercero, was she smiling and happy. Her mother said that that was the real Blanca, and that the other one, the one back in the city, was a Blanca in hibernation. — Isabel Allende

Most people feel younger than their age, but the culture values youth, success, beauty, productivity. There is no space in this culture for older people. — Isabel Allende

Catholics form a majority in Chile, although there are more and more Evangelicals and Pentacostals who irritate everyone because they have a direct understanding with God while everyone else must pass through the priestly bureaucracy. — Isabel Allende

I never said I wanted a 'happy' life but an interesting one. From separation and loss, I have learned a lot. I have become strong and resilient, as is the case of almost every human being exposed to life and to the world. We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward. — Isabel Allende

Memory is fiction. We select the brightest and the darkest, ignoring what we are ashamed of, and so embroider the broad tapestry of our lives. — Isabel Allende

She never imagined a scenario in which her love was not returned with the same depth of feeling, for to her it was impossible to believe that a love of such magnitude could have stunned only her. The most elementary logic and justice indicated that somewhere in the city he was suffering the same delicious torment. — Isabel Allende

Women are the only ones who will be able to eliminate the patriarchy, and when that happens all of us will win, men as much as women. — Isabel Allende

I learned very quickly that when you emigrate, you lose the crutches that have been your support; you must begin from zero, because the past is erased with a single stroke and no one cares where you’re from or what you did before. — Isabel Allende

I carry around a little stool to stand on when people want a picture with their cellular phones. — Isabel Allende

Cooking can be like foreplay. — Isabel Allende

The writer of good will carries a lamp to illuminate the dark corners. — Isabel Allende

Give, give, give - what is the point of having experience, knowledge or talent if I don't give it away? Of having stories if I don't tell them to others? Of having wealth if I don't share it? I don't intend to be cremated with any of it! It is in giving that I connect with others, with the world and with the divine. — Isabel Allende

When my daughter Paula died, I was in the deepest pain, and my mother said, "This kind of sorrow is like a long, narrow, dark channel. You have to walk this channel alone and be sure that there is light at the other ending. Just keep walking." — Isabel Allende

You would give your life for your little baby. It's not the same when you are in a sexual relationship unless you feel that you are loved as you love. — Isabel Allende

The slave who dances is free ... while he is dancing. — Isabel Allende

Youth is not a period in life but a state of mind. — Isabel Allende

He was not oppressed by a crowd because in the midst of all the hullabaloo he always found a quiet place for his soul. — Isabel Allende

Society decides when we get old. But the spirit never ages. — Isabel Allende

Wishes and fears are illusions, Dil Bahadur, not realities. You must practice detachment. — Isabel Allende

I need to tell a story. It's an obsession. Each story is a seed inside of me that starts to grow and grow, like a tumor, and I have to deal with it sooner or later. — Isabel Allende

Writing is a process, a journey into memory and the soul. — Isabel Allende

We've lost our sense of ethics; we live in a world of small-mindedness, of gratification without happiness and actions without meaning. — Isabel Allende

After a few months without writing, months I've lived turned outward... I fear going deaf, not being able to hear the silence. — Isabel Allende

A novel is like a window, open to an infinite landscape. — Isabel Allende

Writers speak for those who are kept in silence — Isabel Allende

I'm not willing to sign a contract. They want everything. They want the rights to do the movie and everything else they can think of, forever. There's no limit to the contract. In this universe and universes to be discovered - I'm not making this up - this is in the contract. — Isabel Allende

Just as Daniel Balalcazar said, it makes no sense to suffer in advance a misfortune that may never occur. — Isabel Allende

Love is music, and sex is only the instrument. — Isabel Allende

It is a wonderful truth that things we want most in life-a sense of purpose, happiness and hope-are most easily attained by giving them to others. — Isabel Allende

Every person is born with a talent, and happiness depends on discovering that talent in time. — Isabel Allende

write with honesty and don't worry about the feelings of others, because no matter what you say, they'll hate you anyway. — Isabel Allende

Everyone has a story, the air is full of stories. The creative process is mysterious, I don't know why it is that suddenly a theme will take hold of me and refuse to leave me in peace until I investigate it and write it. — Isabel Allende

He realized...that the loudest are the least sincere, that arrogance is a quality of the ignorant, and that flatterers tend to be vicious. — Isabel Allende

Real soup is to the body what peace is to the soul. — Isabel Allende

We have all the technology to record things in the streets. Now the historians cannot twist it or change it, because we have cellular phones or video cameras, and we are filming in the streets what's going on. We have the voices of everybody recorded. There's too much recording and I think that's wonderful. — Isabel Allende

I've been so thoroughly incorporated into the California culture that I practice meditation and go to a therapist, even though I always set a trap: during my meditation I invent stories to keep from being bored, and in therapy I invent stories to keep from boring the psychologist. — Isabel Allende

Reading is like looking through several windows which open to an infinite landscape....For me life without reading would be like being in prison, it would be as if my spirit were in a straightjacket; life would be a very dark and narrow place. — Isabel Allende

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. — Isabel Allende

Everyone is born with some special talent. — Isabel Allende

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. — Isabel Allende

Life Lessons by Isabel Allende

1. Isabel Allende emphasizes the importance of resilience in the face of adversity, teaching us to never give up in the face of difficult times.
2. She also encourages us to find joy in the small moments of life, reminding us to appreciate the beauty of the present moment.
3. Finally, Allende encourages us to have faith in ourselves and our own abilities, teaching us to trust our instincts and take risks in order to reach our goals.