843 Quotes by Isabel Allende

I do not put myself in a box and say, for instance, I’m writing post-colonial literature. I don’t know what I’m writing. That’s the business of professors and critics. My job is to tell a story, and that’s it.

Our land only rewards those who work hard in it.

Mi vida se hace al contarla y mi memoria se fija con la escritura; lo que no pongo en palabras sobre papel, lo borra el tiempo.

We have to defend democracy, but remember that not everything is politics. Without science, industry, and technology, no progress is possible, and without music and art, there’s no soul.

She was one of those stoical, practical women of our country, the kind of woman who has a child with every man who passes through her life and, on top of that, takes in other people’s abandoned children, her own poor relatives, and anybody else who needs a mother, a sister, or an aunt; the kind of woman who’s the pillar of many other lives, who raises her children to grow up and leave her and lets her men leave too, without a word of reproach, because she has more pressing things to worry about.

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.

I am frightened. I have known fear before, but there was always an escape; even during the terror of the military coup there was the salvation of exile. Now I am in a blind alley with all doors closed to hope, and I don’t know how to handle so much fear.

I’m open to love, and I think that I will fall in love with a wonderful man.

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.