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
All summer, I read fiction because you must read for the pleasure and beauty of it, and not only for research. 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.
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.
How many times have I told you not to believe everything you hear? Seek truth for yourself.
Do you truly believe that life is fair, Senor de la Vega? -No, maestro, but I plan to do everything in my power to make it so.
I have a hundred-year-old aunt who aspires to sainthood, and whose only wish has been to go into the convent, but no congregation, not even the Little Sisters of Charity, could tolerate her for more than a few weeks, so the family has had to look after her. Believe me, there is nothing so insufferable as a saint, I wouldn't sic one on my worst enemy.
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.
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 fear is not real, Dil Bahadur; it is only in your mind, like all other things. Our thoughts form what we believe to be reality.
...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.
Every time I asked a question, that magnificent teacher, instead of giving the answer, showed me how to find it. She taught me to organise my thoughts, to do research, to read and listen, to seek alternatives, to resolve old problems with new solutions, to argue logically. Above all, she taught me not to believe anything blindly, to doubt, and to question even what seemed irrefutably true, such as man's superiority over woman, or one race or social class over another.
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.
one of those unforgettable stories that stays with you for years.
In the books I have written, I have created in my mind a universe. My kids say I have a village in my head and I live in that village, and it's true. When I start writing a book, characters from previous books reappear. All my emotions, my mind, my heart, my dreams, everything becomes connected with a new book, and nothing else really matters.
I write a letter to my mother every day, because in that letter, I write down my day. And if I don't write it down, then tomorrow I will forget it and it's gone.