843 Quotes by Isabel Allende

All husbands are boring, John. No woman with an ounce of sense gets married to be entertained, she marries to be maintained.

Seated by her side in the narrow cabin, pressing cold compresses to her forehead and holding her while she vomited, he felt profoundly happy....

Death, with its ancestral weight of terrors, is merely the abandonment of an unserviceable shell at the time the spiritis reintegrated into the unified energy of the cosmos. The end of life, like birth, is a stagein a voyage, and deserves the compassion we accord to its beginnings. There is absolutely no virtue in prolonging the heartbeat and tremors of a body beyond its natural span...

This is what women want: to be safe, to be valued, to live in peace, to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over their bodies and lives, and above all, to be loved.

... the United states is as safe as a convent, but the culture is addicted to violence. Proof of that is to be found in its sports, its games, its art, and, certainly, not least, its films, which are bloodcurdling. North Americans don't want violence in their lives, but they need to experience it indirectly. They are enchanted by war, as long as it's no on their turf.

Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.

Until a few months ago we had a code of honor, and even the worst ruffians behaved with decency. You could leave your gold in a tent with no guard and no one would touch it, but now all that has changed. The law of the jungle rules, the only ideology is greed. Don't let yourself be parted from your weapons, and always travel in pairs or groups, because this is a land of thieves.

The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.

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.