Isabel Allende
Isabel Allende
Isabel Allende; born 2 August 1942) is a Chilean-American writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the "magic realist" tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spiritsand City of the Beasts, which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called "the world's most widely read Spanish-language author". In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize. President Barack Obama awarded her the...
NationalityChilean
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth2 August 1942
CityLima, Peru
CountryChile
The pain of losing my child was a cleansing experience. I had to throw overboard all excess baggage and keep only what is essential.
The fact that I am a writer comes from the experience of being cut away from my roots and living in Venezuela, where I couldn't find a place for myself, for years and years.
Eros is very close to death. And both things, in a way, balance each other.
When I'm scared - and I'm always scared when I have to face an audience, when I have to read a review, when I publish a book...then, I think of my grandfather. My grandfather was this strong, tough Basque who would never bend....What would he do? Well, he would go ahead, close his eyes, and drive forward. You do it and the spirit that is within you....is there.
Everyone in his place and a place for everyone.
Youth is not a period in life but a state of mind.
You have the health you deserve.
I've been a foreigner for the past twenty years. I don't have roots anymore. My roots are in my memory and my writing. That's why memory is so important. Who are you but what you can remember?
Twittering and blogging and all that is fine, but there is no idea of how to phrase something beautifully; how to use language to create an emotion. It's just passing information and sometimes very superficial information.
There is no light without shadow, just as there is no happiness without pain.
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.
There is room in the human heart for all the divinities.
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 don't think of literature as an end in itself. It's just a way of communicating something.