You write a book and it's like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean. You don't know if it will ever reach any shores. And there, you see, sometimes it falls in the hands of the right person.
Isabel AllendeI'm surrounded by young people. I'm always now the oldest and the shortest person in the room.
Isabel AllendeThe source of my difficulties has always been the same: an inability to accept what to others seems natural, and an irresistible tendency to voice opinions no one wants to hear . . .
Isabel AllendeSometimes journalists ask me, "What's the message?" There is no message. I think that fiction should not be trying to give messages. Just tell a story.
Isabel AllendeOnly that, nothing more - a tiny beam of light to show some hidden aspect of reality, to help decipher and understand it and thus to initiate, if possible, a change in the conscience of some readers.
Isabel AllendeAgosins poetic language engages the reader in a mesmerizing journey of inward reflection and exile.
Isabel AllendeWe've lost our sense of ethics; we live in a world of small-mindedness, of gratification without happiness and actions without meaning.
Isabel AllendeOne 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 AllendeWe 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.
Isabel AllendeEvery person is born with a talent, and happiness depends on discovering that talent in time.
Isabel AllendeEveryone has a story, the air is full of stories. The creative process is mysterious, I don't know why it is that suddenly a theme will take hold of me and refuse to leave me in peace until I investigate it and write it.
Isabel AllendeEvery 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.
Isabel AllendeSo firm did Nivea's determination become that she wrote in her diary that she would give up marriage in order to devote herself completely to the struggle for women's suffrage. She was not aware that such a sacrifice would not be necessary, and that she would marry a man for love who would back her up in her political goals.
Isabel AllendeI'm not above anybody. I'm, I'm not better than anybody. I am made of the same material that everybody else is and if somebody can be a saint, so can I and if somebody can be a torturer, so can I.
Isabel AllendePeople come from internally, from other places in the United States, but also displaced people from other parts of the world. They come here. If you walk in the streets of San Francisco, you hear all the languages. You smell all the foods. You listen to the music from everywhere. There's great diversity.
Isabel AllendeIt is a wonderful truth that things we want most in life-a sense of purpose, happiness and hope-are most easily attained by giving them to others.
Isabel AllendeSome people connect with a story and may find between the lines something that might be useful to him or her, but that's not the intention of the author, I think. At least not mine.
Isabel AllendePerhaps we are in this world to search for love, find it and lose it, again and again. With each love, we are born anew, and with each love that ends we collect a new wound. I am covered with proud scars.
Isabel AllendePeople think that they will sit down and produce the great American novel in one sitting. It doesn't work that way. This is a very patient and meticulous work, and you have to do it with joy and love for the process, not for the outcome.
Isabel AllendeThe media could do a much better job, that's for sure, especially the media that targets women... Human rights? They couldn't care less!
Isabel AllendeWe want a world where life is preserved, and the quality of life is enriched for everybody, not only for the privileged.
Isabel Allende