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" 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
Related Quotes:
" 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
" 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
" Americans have a warrior's mentality, most of them. That's how this society was built. The fact that you own a gun and shoot to defend your life is a very American way of thinking. "
Isabel Allende
Society
American
Gun
" I never said I wanted a 'happy' life but an interesting one. From separation and loss, I have learned a lot. I have become strong and resilient, as is the case of almost every human being exposed to life and to the world. We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward. "
Isabel Allende
World
Life
Strong
" I am happier when I love than when I am loved. I adore my husband, my son, my grandchildren, my mother, my dog, and frankly, I don't know if they even like me. But who cares? Loving them is my joy. "
Isabel Allende
Dog
Son
Love
" 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
" 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
" 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 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
" I feel that telling my secrets makes me less vulnerable. What would make me vulnerable are the secrets I keep. "
Isabel Allende
Telling
Secrets
Me
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Home
I Am
People
" 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 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
" Although women do two-thirds of the world's labor, they own less than one percent of the world's assets. "
Isabel Allende
World
Women
Percent
" A man who cooks is very sexy. A woman who cooks is not that sexy. Because it's associated in our mind to the domestic cliche of the woman. "
Isabel Allende
Mind
Sexy
Who
" 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
" Before the military coup in Chile, we had the idea that military coups happen in Banana Republics, somewhere in Central America. It would never happen in Chile. Chile was such a solid democracy. And when it happened, it had brutal characteristics. "
Isabel Allende
Military
America
Banana
" I have a foot here and a foot in some spirit world. There are many more layers to reality, and that permeates my life and my writing in a very natural way. I don't even think about it. "
Isabel Allende
Writing
My Life
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
" 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
" The poorest and most backward societies are always those that put women down. "
Isabel Allende
Always
Down
Most
" The world starts to exist, for Americans, when we are in conflict with a place. And then all of a sudden, Afghanistan pops up on the TV screen and it becomes a place. And it exists for three weeks, and then it disappears into thin air. "
Isabel Allende
Up
Conflict
Air
" I confess that I am a messy, disorganized and impatient reader: if the book doesn't grab me in the first 40 pages, I abandon it. I have piles of half-read books waiting for me to get acute hepatitis or some other serious condition that would force me to rest so that I could read more. "
Isabel Allende
Book
I Am
Me
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Thoughts
History
Women
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Home
Think
Time
" 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
" 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
Me
Mother
People
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Mystery
Research
Believe
" 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. "
Isabel Allende
Time
Food
Much
" I have been a woman for 46 years and I only recently realized I can't change it and I like it. "
Isabel Allende
Been
Years
Woman