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.
A man who cooks is very sexy. A woman who cooks is not that sexy. Because it's associated in our mind to the domestic cliche of the woman.
Fiction happens in the womb. It doesn't get processed in the mind until you do the editing.
Youth is not a period in life but a state of mind.
This is just like the story of Al Capone. In the end he will be caught on tax evasion, and not because of the worst crimes he committed.
I'm going to send you by fax a list of ingredients. And I want you to come up with recipes for lovers that (are) easy. Because if you're going to spend the day cooking, you won't have any energy left for love-making.
This book gave me back the passionate optimism of my youth. This young generation of women will have a tremendous impact on the future.
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.
I feel that telling my secrets makes me less vulnerable. What would make me vulnerable are the secrets I keep.
At five I was already a feminist, and nobody used the word in Chile yet.