Top 500 Isabel Allende Quotes (2024 Update)
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451. “I wait for you to complete the voyage into yourself, for the old wounds to heal. I know that when you return from your nightmares, we shall again walk hand in hand, as before.”

— Isabel Allende

452. “Suggestion works miracles.”

— Isabel Allende

453. “We spent a good part of the twentieth century trying out various forms of revolution, from Marxism to savage capitalism, ranging through each and every intermediate shading. Our hope that a change in government can improve our luck is like hoping to win the lottery: totally without rational foundation.”

— Isabel Allende

454. “I could never have invented such a clan. Actually, I had no need to, with a family like mine you don’t need imagination.”

— Isabel Allende

455. “As well as walking erect and disguising his tiredness, he also tried to avoid other symptoms of old age: meanness, mistrust, ill temper, resentment, and bad habits such as no longer shaving every day, repeating the same stories over and over, talking about himself, his ailments, or money.”

— Isabel Allende

456. “El calendario es un invento humano; el tiempo a nivel spiritual no existe...”

— Isabel Allende

457. “I have lived in a rough sea where waves would lift me and then drop me to the bottom.”

— Isabel Allende

458. “That is what I am attempting in my stumbling spiritual practice: to rid myself of the negative feelings that prevent walking with assurance. I want to transform rage into creative energy and guilt into a mocking acceptance of my faults; I want to sweep away arrogance and vanity.”

— Isabel Allende

459. “I took the opportunity to tell her about you, a stupendous young man, sensible and of solid principles, handsome, hardworking, and intelligent. Etelvina, who was serving the pie, froze with the knife in the air and asked me who I was talking about.”

— Isabel Allende

460. “Blanca argued that her reading should be monitored because there were certain things that were inappropriate for her age, but her Uncle Jaime felt that people never read what did not interest them and that if it interested them that meant they were sufficiently mature to read it.”

— Isabel Allende

461. “Weinig oude mensen zijn tevreden, Irina. De meesten leven in armoede, met een gebrekkige gezondheid en zonder familie. Dit is de moeilijkste en kwetsbaarste fase van ons leven, erger nog dan je kinderjaren, want met de dag ga je verder achteruit en er wacht je geen andere toekomst dan de dood.”

— Isabel Allende

462. “Dicen que nunca se termina un libro, que simplemente el autor se da por vencido.”

— Isabel Allende

463. “Nathaniel Belasco had photographed his wife between 1977 and 1983, using one of the first twenty-by-twenty-four Polaroids capable of capturing the tiniest details with the utmost precision.”

— Isabel Allende

464. “Irina could not imagine the courage it took to grow old without becoming too frightened; her knowledge of age.”

— Isabel Allende

465. “No one gives you anything in life, Teresa would say, you have to take it by force, and as soon as you get careless they’ll take it back.”

— Isabel Allende

466. “I tried to show my affection and gratitude with small attentions, but he would not allow it; he was not used to receiving affection, although it was his nature to squander it on others.”

— Isabel Allende

467. “He had had his mouth washed out with soap so often that he stopped calling Rosette his sister, but not enough to make him stop loving her with that terrible, possessive, absolute love that solitary children give.”

— Isabel Allende

468. “I am grateful to that unhappy childhood because it provided ample material for my writing. I don’t know how novelists with happy childhoods in normal homes manage.”

— Isabel Allende

469. “The CIA orchestrated a plan to prevent Allende from assuming the presidency. First it tried to bribe members of Congress not to designate Allende and to call for a second vote.”

— Isabel Allende

470. “To see my country with the heart, one must read Pablo Neruda, the national poet who in his verses immortalized the imposing landscapes, the aromas and dawns, the tenacious rain and dignified poverty, the stoicism and the hospitality, of Chile. That is the land of my nostalgia, the one I invoke in my solitude, the one that appears as a backdrop in so many of my stories, the one that comes to me in my dreams.”

— Isabel Allende

471. “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them,” wrote Margaret Atwood.”

— Isabel Allende

472. “When I was a girl in my grandfather’s house, the men in the family had money, cars, and freedom to come and go anytime they wanted, as well as the authority to make all decisions, even the smallest ones, such as what would appear on the dinner menu. My mother had none of that; she lived off her father’s and older brother’s charity. She also had to protect her reputation. How much of that did I perceive? Enough to suffer for it.”

— Isabel Allende

473. “El problema no estaba en conseguir la respuesta, sino en formular la pregunta precisa.”

— Isabel Allende

474. “I want to transform rage into creative energy and guilt into a mocking acceptance of my faults; I want to sweep away arrogance and vanity.”

— Isabel Allende

475. “I never accepted the limited feminine role imposed upon me by my family, society, culture, and religion. At fifteen I walked away from the church forever, not for lack of faith – that cam later – but because of the inherent machismo of all religious organizations. I cannot belong to an institution that considers me a second-class member whose authorities, always male, enjoy complete impunity and enforce their rules with dogma.”

— Isabel Allende

476. “They’re really good people. Quakers are always to be found where they’re most needed.”

— Isabel Allende

477. “Words are free, she tried to say, and she appropriated them; they were all hers.”

— Isabel Allende

478. “Porque no soy una persona sociable, no tengo muchos amigos ni me gustan las fiestas o el bochinche, por el contrario, me siento mejor solo.”

— Isabel Allende

479. “Years sneak by quickly, on tiptoe, scoffing, and suddenly they give us a fright in the mirror or smack us on the back. Every minute is precious and we can’t waste it on misunderstanding, impatience, jealousy, pettiness, or the other silly stuff that soils relationships. In truth this formula can be applied at any age because it’s always the case that our days are limited. If I had lived this.”

— Isabel Allende

480. “The path to addiction is straight and well paved;.”

— Isabel Allende

481. “Don’t think you’re so special – remember that the nail that sticks out is the one the hammer hits.”

— Isabel Allende

482. “Mario Vargas Llosa’s.”

— Isabel Allende

483. “Patriarchy is imposed with aggression; it demands obedience and punishes those who defy it.”

— Isabel Allende

484. “The young soldier was part of the “Baby Bottle Conscription,” the boys called up when there were no more men, young or old, to fight the war.”

— Isabel Allende

485. “The General was right. No one dies of hunger here – you reach out your hand and pluck a mango. That’s why there is no progress. Cold countries have more advanced civilizations because the climate forces people to work.”

— Isabel Allende

486. “Miss Rose has decided that Eliza would have learning, dowry, and fame as a beauty even if she was not one, because it was her view that beauty is a question of style. Any woman who conducts herself with the queenly assurance of a belle, she maintained, will convince everyone that she is beautiful.”

— Isabel Allende

487. “She had loved her husband with the fierce loyalty of someone who does not question her destiny as a wife, but becoming a widow was a liberation for her.”

— Isabel Allende

488. “John Lennon said that life is what happens when we are busy making other plans.”

— Isabel Allende

489. “I have been training for years to be a passionate old woman, just as others train to climb mountains or play chess.”

— Isabel Allende

490. “I was a voracious reader and what I had learned in books confirmed that the world changes constantly and humanity evolves, but the changes are only obtained after much struggle.”

— Isabel Allende

491. “The argument went on and on, and they became locked in a confused rhetorical exchange that left them exhausted, each accusing the other of being more stubborn than a mule. But in the end they kissed each other good night and both were left with the feeling that the other was an extraordinary human being.”

— Isabel Allende

492. “Alma Belasco had caught her attention. She stood.”

— Isabel Allende

493. “Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life.”

— Isabel Allende

494. “I think of my destiny as an expatriate. It is my fate to wander from place to place, and to adapt to new soils. I believe I will be able to do that because handfuls of Chilean soil are caught in my roots; I carry them with me always.”

— Isabel Allende

495. “Chile with the purpose of finding her lover and becoming his slave forever, believing that was the way to extinguish her thirst to submit and her hidden wish for possession, but now she doubted that she could give up those new wings beginning to sprout on her shoulders.”

— Isabel Allende

496. “Supo morir como supo vivir.”

— Isabel Allende

497. “Los soldados aguardaron, cavando trincheras y amontonando sacos de tierra y piedras para formar una barricada, no tanto por la esperanza de protegerse, sino para distraer el miedo.”

— Isabel Allende

498. “What I learned then helps now in my writing: working under pressure, conducting an interview, doing research, using the language efficiently. I never forget that a book is not an end in itself. Just like a newspaper or a magazine, a book is a means of communication, which is why I try to grab the reader by the throat and not let go to the end.”

— Isabel Allende

499. “Most people live their lives without any link with the divine and do not note the signs, coincidences, premonitions, and small daily miracles in which the supernatural is manifest.”

— Isabel Allende

500. “I was born in 1920, during the influenza pandemic, and I’m going to die in 2020, during the outbreak of coronavirus. What an elegant name for such a terrible scourge.”

— Isabel Allende