Top 500 Isabel Allende Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them.”

— Isabel Allende

52. “You have the health you deserve.”

— Isabel Allende

53. “We are too connected. There’s noise in our heads all the time.”

— Isabel Allende

54. “I was born in the middle of World War II, the middle of the Holocaust; I was born when there was no declaration of human rights, when feminism was not an issue, when children were working in factories. I mean, today’s world is a better place!”

— Isabel Allende

55. “You write a book and it’s like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean. You don’t know if it will ever reach any shores. And there, you see, sometimes it falls in the hands of the right person.”

— Isabel Allende

56. “Heart is what drives us and determines our fate. That is what I need for my characters in my books: a passionate heart. I need mavericks, dissidents, adventurers, outsiders and rebels, who ask questions, bend the rules and take risks.”

— Isabel Allende

57. “When my daughter Paula died, I was in the deepest pain, and my mother said, “This kind of sorrow is like a long, narrow, dark channel. You have to walk this channel alone and be sure that there is light at the other ending. Just keep walking.””

— Isabel Allende

58. “Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change.”

— Isabel Allende

59. “Perhaps we are in this world to search for love, find it and lose it, again and again. With each love, we are born anew, and with each love that ends we collect a new wound. I am covered with proud scars.”

— Isabel Allende

60. “Today’s girls are tomorrow’s women – and leaders.”

— Isabel Allende

61. “In my lifetime, the world has become better, not worse. And the world is moving, very slowly but surely with more democracy and more liberal way of thinking, more inclusion and more diversity.”

— Isabel Allende

62. “Nice people with common sense do not make interesting characters. They only make good former spouses.”

— Isabel Allende

63. “I learned very quickly that when you emigrate, you lose the crutches that have been your support; you must begin from zero, because the past is erased with a single stroke and no one cares where you’re from or what you did before.”

— Isabel Allende

64. “We don’t have an explanation for everything that happens. We don’t control almost anything. And if we are not open to that mystery, life becomes so small.”

— Isabel Allende

65. “Accept the children the way we accept trees – with gratitude, because they are a blessing – but do not have expectations or desires. You don’t expect trees to change, you love them as they are.”

— Isabel Allende

66. “And I am not one of those women who trips twice over the same stone.”

— Isabel Allende

67. “Todos tenemos demonios en los rincones oscuros del alma, pero si los sacamos a la luz, los demonios se achican, se debilitan, se callan y al fin nos dejan en paz.”

— Isabel Allende

68. “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.”

— Isabel Allende

69. “My life is about ups and downs, great joys and great losses.”

— Isabel Allende

70. “I’m aware of the mystery around us, so I write about coincidences, premonitions, emotions, dreams, the power of nature, magic.”

— Isabel Allende

71. “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.”

— Isabel Allende

72. “Everyone has a story, the air is full of stories. The creative process is mysterious, I don’t know why it is that suddenly a theme will take hold of me and refuse to leave me in peace until I investigate it and write it.”

— Isabel Allende

73. “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.”

— Isabel Allende

74. “I don’t read thrillers, romance or mystery, and I don’t read self-help books because I don’t believe in shortcuts and loopholes.”

— Isabel Allende

75. “That is the best part of writing: finding the hidden treasures, giving sparkle to worn out events, invigorating the tired soul with imagination, creating some kind of truth with many lies.”

— Isabel Allende

76. “She sowed in my mind the idea that reality is not only what we see on the surface; it has a magical dimension as well and, if we so desire, it is legitimate to enhance it and color it to make our journey through life less trying.”

— Isabel Allende

77. “I was a very bad journalist. Awful. I would just invent everything. If I did an interview, I had a preconception of what that person should say and I would put my words in his mouth.”

— Isabel Allende

78. “The world is a very unjust, unfair place and we have to live with that. Historically, there is impunity for most crimes.”

— Isabel Allende

79. “Tal vez no hicieron nada que no hubieran hecho con otros, pero es muy distinto hacer el amor amando.”

— Isabel Allende

80. “At the most difficult moments of my life, when it seemed that every door was closed to me, the taste of those apricots comes back to comfort me with the notion that abundance is always within reach, if only one knows how to find it.”

— Isabel Allende

81. “Barrabas came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy.”

— Isabel Allende

82. “The names of persons and living creatures demand respect, because when we speak to them we touch their heart and become a part of thier life force.”

— Isabel Allende

83. “Erotica is using a feather; pornograpy is using the whole chicken.”

— Isabel Allende

84. “If you change the way you tell your own story, you can change the colour and create a life in technicolour.”

— Isabel Allende

85. “Sisters: talk to each other, be connected and informed, form women’s circles, share your stories, work together, and take risks. Together we are invincible.”

— Isabel Allende

86. “La vida es un ruido entre dos grandes silencios.”

— Isabel Allende

87. “Eros is very close to death. And both things, in a way, balance each other.”

— Isabel Allende

88. “It’s going to go away because we all need silence. We all need time to reflect and think. I am not at all pessimistic about this.”

— Isabel Allende

89. “Tell Larry I’m not going to the reception, and that he can’t count on me for anything for the rest of my life.” Her emphatic tone brooked no argument. Her daughter-in-law closed the door silently and went to give her husband the message.”

— Isabel Allende

90. “I seek truth and beauty in the transparency of an autumn leaf, in the perfect form of a seashell on the beach, in the curve of a woman’s back, in the texture of an ancient tree trunk, but also in the elusive forms of reality.”

— Isabel Allende

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

— Isabel Allende

92. “A book is not an end in itself; it is only a way to touch someone – a bridge extended across a space of loneliness and obscurity – and sometimes it is a way of winning other people to our causes.”

— Isabel Allende

93. “Feminism, like the ocean, is fluid, powerful, deep, and encompasses the infinite complexity of life; it moves in waves, currents, tides, and sometimes in storms. Like the ocean, feminism never stays quiet.”

— Isabel Allende

94. “He was not oppressed by a crowd because in the midst of all the hullabaloo he always found a quiet place for his soul.”

— Isabel Allende

95. “Full belly, happy heart,” was the favorite saying of Padre Mendoza, who had been obsessed with good nutrition ever since he’d heard of sailors suffering from scurvy when a lemon could have prevented their agony.”

— Isabel Allende

96. “He had only to touch me to turn my tears into sighs and my anger to desire. How accomodating love is; it forgives everything.”

— Isabel Allende

97. “My writing comes not from the happy moments, but from struggle and grief.”

— Isabel Allende

98. “Do you truly believe that life is fair, Senor de la Vega? -No, maestro, but I plan to do everything in my power to make it so.”

— Isabel Allende

99. “How many times have I told you not to believe everything you hear? Seek truth for yourself.”

— Isabel Allende

100. “The writer of good will carries a lamp to illuminate the dark corners.”

— Isabel Allende