843 Quotes by Isabel Allende

I felt the strength of his desire, his hands at my waist, at the back of my neck, in my hair, his lips on my face and neck; I caught his young man’s scent, heard his voice murmuring my name, and I felt blessed. How could I in less than a minute go from the sadness of having been abandoned to the joy of feeling loved?

Writing is my job. I don’t think of it as art.

Since when has a man not beaten his wife? If he doesn’t beat her, it’s either because he doesn’t love her or because he isn’t a real man. Since when is a man’s paycheck or the fruit of the earth or what the chickens lay shared between them, when everybody knows he is the one in charge? Since when has a woman ever done the same things as a man? Besides, she was born with a wound between her legs and without balls, right, Senora Clara?

She embellished the facts, because she was aware that life is.

Give, give, give-what is the point of having experience, knowledge or talent if I don’t give it away?

You only have one life, but if you live it well, that’s enough. The only reality is now, today. What are you waiting for to be happy?

What happens in the world affects me. Sometimes, that’s part of the writing.

The last time I was in Chile, I was hypnotized by a friend who is studying to be a curandero, a healer, who led me back through several incarnations. It wasn’t easy to return to the present, however, since my friend hadn’t reached that part of the course, but the experiment was well worth the effort because I discovered that in former lives I was not Genghis Khan, as my mother believes.

I need to tell a story. It’s an obsession. Each story is a seed inside of me that starts to grow and grow, like a tumor, and I have to deal with it sooner or later.