Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" I want to have an epic life. I want to tell my life with big adjectives. I want to forget all the grays in between, and remember the highlights and the dark moments. "

Isabel Allende

Life

Remember

My Life

" My mother is a great artist, but she always treated her paintings like minor postcards. Had she pursued it, she would have been a great artist. Instead, she looked down on her art. "

" Feminism has never been sexy, but let me assure you that it never stopped me from flirting, and I have seldom suffered from lack of men. "

Isabel Allende

Sexy

You

" If I can write it, I can cope. And I've been writing many books, but in every book, I try to explore something in my own soul that I need to solve, I need to understand. "

" I like historical fiction. I fell in love with New Orleans the first time I visited it. And I wanted to place a story in New Orleans. "

Isabel Allende

Love

New

" My father left when I was three, and I have no memory of him. The most significant male figures in my life were my grandfather, in whose house I lived during the first 10 years of my childhood, and later my stepfather. "

" I was a lousy journalist. I could never be objective. Sometimes I invented the whole story. "

" On a Tuesday, September 11th, 1973, we had the military coup in Chile that forced me to leave my country eventually. And then, on a Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, we had the terrorist attack in the United States. "

Isabel Allende

Country

Leave

" 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. "

" At five I was already a feminist, and nobody used the word in Chile yet. "

" I have more freedom when I write fiction, but my memoirs have had a much stronger impact on my readers. Somehow the 'message,' even if I am not even aware that there is one, is conveyed better in this form. "

" What I fear most is power with impunity. I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse. "

" I'm interested in people who have to overcome obstacles, people who are not sheltered by the umbrella of the establishment, marginals. "

" If I had to choose between a relative and a good story, I would take the story. "

" Twittering and blogging and all that is fine, but there is no idea of how to phrase something beautifully; how to use language to create an emotion. It's just passing information and sometimes very superficial information. "

" I never thought that I would come to live in the United States. I was not pursuing the American dream. "

" I don't think the world will destroy itself in a nuclear cataclysm. On the contrary, we have the capacity to save ourselves and save the planet, and we will use it. "

" Give, give, give - what is the point of having experience, knowledge or talent if I don't give it away? Of having stories if I don't tell them to others? Of having wealth if I don't share it? I don't intend to be cremated with any of it! It is in giving that I connect with others, with the world and with the divine. "

" I 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 Allende

Family

People

" In the United States, the fact that you can start again gives a lot of energy and strength and youth to this country. That is why it's so powerful in many ways, and so creative. "

" If I didn't write my soul would dry up and die. "

Isabel Allende

Die

Write

" One of the things that always comes up in my writing is the search for freedom, especially in women. I always write about women who are marginalized, who have no means or resources and somehow manage to get out of those situations with incredible strength - and that is more important than anything. "

" I'm living in California but I have a place that is mine in Chile and I belong there. I am no longer an exile. "

" 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 was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet, so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me. "

Isabel Allende

World

Family

" I was such a sullen, angry, sad kid. I'm sure there are writers who have had happy childhoods, but what are you going to write about? No ghosts, no fear. I'm very happy that I had an unhappy and uncomfortable childhood. "

" Writing is a calling, not a choice. "

" Writing is my job. I don't think of it as art. "

" Fear is like a black cavern that is terrifying. Once you enter the cavern and explore it, you realize that you can get out of it, go through it and get out of it. "

" My writing comes not from the happy moments, but from struggle and grief. "