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" I was not supposed to be in any way a liberated person. I was a female born in the '40s in a patriarchal family; I was supposed to marry and make everyone around me happy. "
Isabel Allende
Family
Way
Person
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" For real change, we need feminine energy in the management of the world. We need a critical number of women in positions of power, and we need to nurture the feminine energy in men. "
Isabel Allende
Management
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Women
" One 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. "
Isabel Allende
Time
Culture
City
" The poorest and most backward societies are always those that put women down. "
Isabel Allende
Always
Down
Most
" I tend to see the similarities in people and not the differences. "
Isabel Allende
Similarities
Differences
People
" If you change the way you tell your own story, you can change the colour and create a life in technicolour. "
Isabel Allende
Own
Story
Life
" We want a world where life is preserved, and the quality of life is enriched for everybody, not only for the privileged. "
Isabel Allende
Life
World
Where
" A memoir is an invitation into another person's privacy. "
Isabel Allende
Invitation
Memoir
Privacy
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Story
Life
Swimming
" All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom. "
Isabel Allende
End
Loyalty
Justice
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Knowledge
Experience
World
" Writing is a calling, not a choice. "
Isabel Allende
Calling
Choice
Writing
" I rebelled against all form of authority, against my grandfather, my step-father, the Church, the police, the government, the bosses. Everything male that was there, and was determining my life. "
Isabel Allende
Police
Government
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. "
Isabel Allende
Artist
She
Mother
" 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
" 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
" Empowering women means trusting them. "
Isabel Allende
Means
Trusting
Women
" 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
" I have become an American citizen, and I love this country. I think that this country has incredible potential for goodness, an incredible possibility for doing the wrong thing, too. "
Isabel Allende
Love
American
Think
" I have travelled all over the world and one thing that amazes me is that I can communicate with people. My story may be different but emotionally we are all the same. "
Isabel Allende
Story
Be Different
Me
" 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
" If I didn't write my soul would dry up and die. "
Isabel Allende
Die
Write
Up
" 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
Like
Love
New
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Realize
Explore
You
" Everything I write has to be connected to my life. One of the things that always comes up in my writing is the search for freedom, especially in women. "
Isabel Allende
Writing
Freedom
Life
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Heart
Writing
Dreams
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Creative
Youth
You
" If this world is going to be a better place for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, it will be women who make it so. "
Isabel Allende
Grandchildren
Women
World
" I write a letter to my mother every day, because in that letter, I write down my day. And if I don't write it down, then tomorrow I will forget it and it's gone. "
Isabel Allende
Forget
Mother
Tomorrow
" 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
" 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