Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Isabel Allende

I Am

Freedom

Better

Related Quotes:

" The fact that you own a gun and shoot to defend your life is a very American way of thinking. "

" I love fiction because in fiction you go into the thoughts of people, the little people, the people who were defeated, the poor, the women, the children that are never in history books. "

" I speak English and Spanish. I write in Spanish; my books are published in English. "

" 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

" I was a political refugee living in Venezuela. I had a job that was twelve hours a day, no money. It was a hard time. "

" I don't want an uneventful and safe life, I prefer an adventurous one. "

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

" I can promise you that women working together - linked, informed and educated - can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet. "

" 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

" My mother didn't want me to be a feminist, a radical, political person, because she was scared. She wanted me to be protected and safe, but my life never was. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There's basically an element of fiction in everything you remember. Imagination and memory are almost the same brain processes. When I write fiction, I know that I'm using a bunch of lies that I've made up to create some form of truth. When I write a memoir, I'm using true elements to create something that will always be somehow fictionalized. "

" From journalism I learned to write under pressure, to work with deadlines, to have limited space and time, to conduct and interview, to find information, to research, and above all, to use language as efficiently as possible and to remember always that there is a reader out there. "

" It is in giving that I connect with others, with the world and with the divine. "

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

" 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 life is about ups and downs, great joys and great losses. "

" 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

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

" Everything that has to do with food is sensuous. In the United States, however, we are eating all the time. We have a problem with obesity. And yet, we don't enjoy food that much. "

" I read on my iPad when I travel. I listen to audiobooks in the car. I read books in my bedroom, where I have a comfortable couch, a lamp and two dogs to keep me warm. "

Isabel Allende

Listen

Comfortable

" 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. "

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

Isabel Allende

Die

Write

" I have lived with passion and in a hurry, trying to accomplish too many things. I never had time to think about my beliefs until my 28-year-old daughter Paula fell ill. She was in a coma for a year, and I took care of her at home until she died in my arms in December of 1992. "

" I write until the first draft is finished, and then I feel that I can get out. But, during the time of the writing of the first draft, I don't go out. I'm just locked away, writing. It's a time of meditation, of going into the story. "

" 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. "

" The media could do a much better job, that's for sure, especially the media that targets women... Human rights? They couldn't care less! "

" You couldn't find two people more different than my mother and I. There are a thousand things about me that she fought against. "

Isabel Allende

Mother

People

" If you change the way you tell your own story, you can change the colour and create a life in technicolour. "