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" 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. "

Isabel Allende

Daughter

Home

She

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" I have been a woman for 46 years and I only recently realized I can't change it and I like it. "

" I get thousands of letters, and they give me a feeling of how each book is perceived. Often I think I have written about a certain theme, but by reading the letters or reviews, I realise that everybody sees the book differently. "

Isabel Allende

Feeling

Theme

" Every life of a character is within a context. If I write detached from a social and political background, my story looks like a soap opera where everybody is indoors, not working and living off their emotions. "

" I am an American citizen and it is my home now. I like the U.S.A., which is not a place too many people have liked since Bush. The U.S. has a young population, and everything can change within a year. "

" Nice people with common sense do not make interesting characters. They only make good former spouses. "

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

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

" Writing is a calling, not a choice. "

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

" In times of conflict, war, poverty or religious fundamentalism, women and children are the first and most numerous victims. Women need all their courage today. "

" Kids are smart: don't underestimate their bull detector. Contemporary kids have access to a lot of information, so don't even try to fool them. I have never been more nervous about my research than when writing for young adults because they pick up every single error. "

" I get up every morning early, when the sky is red, and write for 10 hours. "

Isabel Allende

Sky

Early

" I write to understand my circumstances, to sort out the confusion of reality, to exorcise my demons. But most of all, I write because I love it! "

" I was a very bad journalist. Awful. I would just invent everything. If I did an interview, I had a preconception of what that person should say and I would put my words in his mouth. "

" I try to write the kind of books I like to read. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" The fact people think that when you sell a lot of books you are not a serious writer is a great insult to the readership. I get a little angry when people try to say such a thing. "

" I've been a story-teller all my life but I realized it only recently. "

" When I write fiction, I never try to deliver a message; I just want to tell a story. But I admit that I want the story to be memorable and the characters to touch the reader's heart. "

" 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

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

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

" 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. "

" Roots are not in landscape or a country, or a people, they are inside you. "

" I tend to see the similarities in people and not the differences. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "