One of the characteristics of North American culture is that you can always start again. You can always move forward, cross a border of a state or a city or a county, and move West, most of the time West. You leave behind guilt, past traditions, memories. You are as if born again, in the sense of the snake: You leave your skin behind and you begin again. For most people in the world, that is totally impossible.
Isabel AllendeI'm living in California but I have a place that is mine in Chile and I belong there. I am no longer an exile.
Isabel AllendeI don't think I would be a writer if I had stayed in Chile. I would be trapped in the chores, in the family, in the person that people expected me to be.
Isabel AllendeHe had only to touch me to turn my tears into sighs and my anger to desire. How accomodating love is; it forgives everything.
Isabel Allende