Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Mouth
Say
Words
Related Quotes:
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Imagination
Truth
Memory
" In 2011, I announced that I was going to retire, and my agent panicked. So she says: 'No, no, no. You have to write a book with your husband.' My husband is a writer of crime novels. His name is William Gordon. And so I had to accommodate to his style because that's what he writes. So we decided we'd give it a try. Well, we almost divorced. "
Isabel Allende
You
Book
Husband
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Life
Mother
My Life
" I never try to give a message in my books. It's about living with characters long enough to hear their voices and let them tell me the story. Sometimes I would love to have a happy ending, and it doesn't happen because the character or the story leads me in another direction. "
Isabel Allende
Ending
Happy
Story
" The longest, most solid and complex relationship in my life is with my mother. It started before I was born, and now, when I am 71 and living in California and she is 92 and living in Chile, we are still in touch daily. "
Isabel Allende
Relationship
Daily
Life
" I never try to convey a message, I just want to tell a story. Why that story in particular? I have no idea, but I have learned to surrender to the muse. I become obsessed with a theme or with certain stories; they haunt me for years, and finally, I write them. "
Isabel Allende
Me
Why
Want
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Women
Strength
Writing
" Empowering women means trusting them. "
Isabel Allende
Means
Trusting
Women
" We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward. In times of tragedy, of war, of necessity, people do amazing things. The human capacity for survival and renewal is awesome. "
Isabel Allende
Strong
Amazing
People
" I can promise you that women working together - linked, informed and educated - can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet. "
Isabel Allende
Working Together
Women
Peace
" 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
Me
Country
Leave
" 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! "
Isabel Allende
Media
Women
Care
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Money
Time
Political
" Women have always been courageous... They are always fearless when protecting their children and in the last century they have been fearless in the fight for their rights. "
Isabel Allende
Fight
Fearless
Children
" A memoir is my version of events. My perspective. I choose what to tell and what to omit. I choose the adjectives to describe a situation, and in that sense, I'm creating a form of fiction. "
Isabel Allende
Choose
Creating
Perspective
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Better
Think
Face
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Language
Create
Sometimes
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Young
Writing
Smart
" I remember my childhood as a horrible time. My mother says that nothing so horrible ever happened to me as the things that I remember. "
Isabel Allende
Time
Me
Childhood
" Heart is what drives us and determines our fate. "
Isabel Allende
Heart
Fate
Us
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Mystery
Believe
Romance
" I was a lousy journalist. I could never be objective. Sometimes I invented the whole story. "
Isabel Allende
Objective
Sometimes
Story
" 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
Me
Family
" 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
Me
Listen
Comfortable
" My desk is like a 'U,' so I have my computer and lots of dictionaries because I write in Spanish and I live in English. "
Isabel Allende
Write
Because
Desk
" I'm very optimistic because I think that the real strength of a nation like the United States comes from blending cultures. There's no way that you can close the frontiers anywhere. The borders are there to be violated permanently. "
Isabel Allende
Nation
You
Strength
" Unfortunately for my family, they have a writer in the family. "
Isabel Allende
Family
Writer
Unfortunately
" A memoir forces me to stop and remember carefully. It is an exercise in truth. In a memoir, I look at myself, my life, and the people I love the most in the mirror of the blank screen. In a memoir, feelings are more important than facts, and to write honestly, I have to confront my demons. "
Isabel Allende
Life
Mirror
Truth
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Looks
Life
Character
" Giving women education, work, the ability to control their own income, inherit and own property, benefits the society. If a woman is empowered, her children and her family will be better off. If families prosper, the village prospers, and eventually so does the whole country. "
Isabel Allende
Children
Education
Family