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
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 never try to give a message in my books. It's about living with characters long enough to hear their voices and let them tell me the story. Sometimes I would love to have a happy ending, and it doesn't happen because the character or the story leads me in another direction.
I can't control life for my grandchildren, so how could I control a story? Sometimes I try to force something, and after working and working on that chapter, I realise that I am swimming against the current. I will never get there. So I have to let go of whatever previous idea I had about it and let the characters decide.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think that any writer who is commercial, who sells a lot of books, has to face criticism. Because the more hermetic and the more difficult your book is, supposedly it's better.
The fact that you own a gun and shoot to defend your life is a very American way of thinking.
It is in giving that I connect with others, with the world and with the divine.
I never thought that I would come to live in the United States. I was not pursuing the American dream.