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" 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. "

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" The fact that I am a writer comes from the experience of being cut away from my roots and living in Venezuela, where I couldn't find a place for myself, for years and years. "

Isabel Allende

Myself

I Am

Experience

" Many fiction writers write for the critics or for themselves; they forget the common reader. I never do. I don't think journalism clashes with my fiction; on the contrary, it helps enormously. "

" 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. "

" 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

Conflict

Air

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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! "

" Writing is a calling, not a choice. "

" 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

Love

New

" 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. "

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

Isabel Allende

Die

Write

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

" 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. "

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

" I have not changed; I am still the same girl I was fifty years ago and the same young woman I was in the seventies. I still lust for life, I am still ferociously independent, I still crave justice, and I fall madly in love easily. "

" I'm aware of the mystery around us, so I write about coincidences, premonitions, emotions, dreams, the power of nature, magic. "

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

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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! "

" 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

Childhood

" I'm a writer. In Latin America, they say I'm a Latin-American writer because I also write in Spanish and my books are translated, but I am an American citizen and my books are published here, so I'm also an American writer. "

" If this world is going to be a better place for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, it will be women who make it so. "

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

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

" 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. "