Top 500 Isabel Allende Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “If for any reason you don’t like the word feminist, look for another word. The name is not important as long as the work gets done for yourself and for your sisters in the rest of the world who need it.”

— Isabel Allende

352. “If I have a perfect lover waiting for me in California, why would I want an imperfect husband?” I argued. “Lovers don’t last; a husband is a captive prey,” she replied.”

— Isabel Allende

353. “What can we do with this happiness that appears for no obvious reason, the joy that needs no cause to exist?”

— Isabel Allende

354. “It bothers them that instead of taking on the role of abandoned lover, I have become a happy wife. They relish seeing strong women like you and me humiliated. They cannot forgive us that we triumphed where so many others fail... Courage is a virtue appreciated in a male but considered a defect in our gender. Bold women are a threat to a world that is out of balance, in favor of men. That is why they work so hard to mistreat and destroy us.”

— Isabel Allende

355. “The rural women taught me that courage is contagious and that there’s strength in numbers; what you can’t do on your own can be achieved together, the more the better.”

— Isabel Allende

356. “How would I run with my bad leg? And what would become of the people who need my care? Besides, it doesn’t mean anything for me to be free and everyone else slaves,” the healer answered. Tete hadn’t thought of that, and it kept buzzing around her brain like a bottlefly. She talked about it with her godmother many times, but she was never able to accept the idea that her freedom was irreparably bound to that of the other slaves.”

— Isabel Allende

357. “Two-thirds of those evacuated at that time had been born in the United States and were American citizens. Standing in long lines, the Japanese had to wait for hours in front of the desks of the officials, who took down their names and handed out labels for them to wear around their necks with their identity number, the same as for their luggage.”

— Isabel Allende

358. “That was the beginning of the revolution. Many years have gone by and blood keeps running, soaking the soil of Haiti, but I am not there to weep.”

— Isabel Allende

359. “I called him Grandfather, because according to him you do not have to be of the same blood or same tribe to be a member of the same family, but in truth I should have called him Maman. He was the only mother I ever knew.”

— Isabel Allende

360. “The Germans are not a race of psychopaths, Alma. They’re normal people like you and me, but with fanaticism, power, and impunity, anyone can turn into a monster, like the SS at Auschwitz,” he told his sister. “Do you think that, given the opportunity, you’d also behave like a monster, Samuel?” “I don’t think it, Alma, I know it. I’ve been a soldier all my life. I’ve been to war. I’ve interrogated prisoners, a large number of them. But I assume you don’t want details.”

— Isabel Allende

361. “Fourth of July picnic. And by the way, that picnic, like everything else in this land, is a model of efficiency: you drive at top speed, set up in a previously reserved space, spread out the baskets, bolt your food, kick the ball, and rush home to avoid the traffic. In Chile, a similar project would take three days.”

— Isabel Allende

362. “I was terrified of being dependent too, Alma,” Dr. Catherine Hope told her one day. “But I’ve realized it’s not such a big deal. You get used to it, and are grateful for the assistance. I can’t dress or take a shower on my own, I have problems brushing my teeth and cutting the chicken on my plate, but I’ve never been more contented than I am now.”

— Isabel Allende

363. “The poet thought this was a splendid riposte, and so accepted him on board, together with fishermen, farm and factory workers, manual laborers, and intellectuals as well, despite instructions from his government to avoid anyone with ideas.”

— Isabel Allende

364. “Compared to Europe, Chile was a happily backward and distant paradise. It was true that at this moment it had a center-left government: the president was from the Radical Party and a freemason. He was detested by the Right, and his name was never mentioned by the “best families,” but he wasn’t going to last long. The Left, with its coarse realism and vulgarity, had no future; the owners of Chile would make sure of that.”

— Isabel Allende

365. “Si eres brillante de joven, no significa que de adulto sirvas para algo.”

— Isabel Allende

366. “Writing is a long process of introspection; it is a voyage toward the darkest caverns of consciousness, a long, slow meditation. I write feeling my way in silence, and along the way discover particles of truth, small crystals that fit in the palm of one hand and justify my passage through this world.”

— Isabel Allende

367. “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.”

— Isabel Allende

368. “But I don’t want more things than I need, either.”

— Isabel Allende

369. “The reality is that everyone is responsible for their own life. We’re dealt certain cards at birth, and we play our hand; some of us lose, but others may play skillfully from the same bad hand and triumph. Our cards determine who we are: age, gender, race, family, nationality, etc., and we can’t change them, only play them to the best of our abilities. The game is marked by challenges and chances, strategizing and cheating.”

— Isabel Allende

370. “After the Spanish Civil War, refugees came to Chile escaping the defeat. In 1939, the poet Pablo Neruda, at the direction of the Chilean government, chartered a ship, the Winnipeg, which sailed from Marseilles carrying a cargo of intellectuals, writers, artists, physicians, engineers, and fine craftsmen.”

— Isabel Allende

371. “He was so unfamiliar with this peaceful sense of happiness he did not even recognize it.”

— Isabel Allende

372. “Con cada amor volvemos a nacer y con cada amor que termina se nos abre una herida. Estoy llena de orgullosas cicatrices.”

— Isabel Allende

373. “Lo peor es tenerle miedo al miedo.”

— Isabel Allende

374. “Very few old folk are happy, Irina. Most of them are poor, aren’t healthy, and have no family. It’s the most fragile and difficult stage of life, more so than childhood, because it grows worse day by day, and there is no future other than death.”

— Isabel Allende

375. “She embellished the facts because she was aware that life is how we tell it, so why would she jot down trivia?”

— Isabel Allende

376. “You are going to be judged harshly because success in women is not easily forgiven.”

— Isabel Allende

377. “At the age of twenty-two, suspecting their time was limited, Ichimei and she had gorged on love to enjoy it to the full, but the more they tried to exhaust it, the wilder their desire became, and whoever says that every flame must sooner or later be extinguished is wrong, because there are passions that blaze on until destiny destroys them with a swipe of its paw, and even then hot embers remain that need only a breath of oxygen to be rekindled.”

— Isabel Allende

378. “We have to consider violence against women for what it really is: the greatest crisis that faces humanity.”

— Isabel Allende

379. “Esto sirve para tranquilizarnos la conciencia, hija. Pero no ayuda a los pobres. No necesitan caridad, sino justicia.”

— Isabel Allende

380. “Desde entonces la gente lo recuerda como Juan del Pedo.”

— Isabel Allende

381. “He did not know that she had seen her own destiny, that she had summoned him with the power of her thought, and that she had already made up her mind to marry without love.”

— Isabel Allende

382. “Van ons hangt het af of liefde eeuwig is.”

— Isabel Allende

383. “You say you’re a coward, but it takes courage to say good-bye to everything and cross a threshold without any idea where it leads.”

— Isabel Allende

384. “Someone like him who thought more about himself than he did his community, had no place in the tribe. Individualism was thought to be a form of madness, like being possessed by a demon.”

— Isabel Allende

385. “But do you know what I’m most grateful for? Love. That has marked me more than anything else. I was incredibly lucky to have Roser. She’ll always be the love of my life. Thanks to her I have Marcel. Being a father has also been essential for me; it’s allowed me to keep faith in what’s best in the human condition.”

— Isabel Allende

386. “The upper middle class and the economic right, who had favored the coup, were euphoric. At first they were a little shocked when they saw the consequences of their action; they had never lived in a dictatorship and did not know what it was like. They thought the loss of democratic freedoms would be temporary and that it was possible to go without individual or collective rights for a while so long as the regime respected the tenets of free enterprise.”

— Isabel Allende

387. “More than forty years ago Bella Abzug, the famous activist and congresswoman from New York, summarized the above in one sentence: “In the twenty-first century women will change the nature of power instead of power changing the nature of women.” My.”

— Isabel Allende

388. “In my family, happiness was irrelevant.”

— Isabel Allende

389. “He was proud of his calloused hands with cracked nails and dry red skin. “Working hands, honest hands,” he’d say.”

— Isabel Allende

390. “There was no defense against the shells, he said, but they had calculated that three volumes of philosophy could stop bullets.”

— Isabel Allende

391. “I discovered that social climbing was a middle-class phenomenon, the poor never gave it a thought, they were too busy trying to survive. Over the years these communities acquired political savvy, they organized and became fertile territory for leftist parties. Ten years later, in 1970, they were decisive in electing Salvador Allende and for that reason had to suffer the greatest repression during the dictatorship.”

— Isabel Allende

392. “She was one of those people who are born for the greatness of a single love, for exaggerated hatred, for apocalyptic vengeance, and for the most sublime forms of heroism, but she was unable to shape her fate to the dimensions of her amorous vocation...”

— Isabel Allende

393. “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

394. “El amor siempre se me ha dado a medias.”

— Isabel Allende

395. “Now that we live longer, we have a couple of decades ahead of us to redefine our goals and find meaning in the years to come. Jampolsky recommends letting go of grievances and negativity. More energy is needed to sustain ill feelings than to forgive. The key to contentment is forgiveness of others and of ourselves. Our last years can be the best if we opt for love instead of fear, he says. Love doesn’t grow like a wild plant, it needs a lot of care.”

— Isabel Allende

396. “There’s a time to live and a time to die. In between there’s time to remember. That is all I’ve done for these past days, silently filling in the missing details to complete this testament – a sentimental legacy, more than a material one.”

— Isabel Allende

397. “Se requiere una voluntad heroica para mantener todo en su sitio.”

— Isabel Allende

398. “AND SINCE we’re talking about nostalgia, I beg you to have a little patience with what follows because I can’t separate the subject of Chile from my own life. My past is composed of passions, surprises, successes, and losses: it isn’t easy to relate in two or three sentences.”

— Isabel Allende

399. “That fairy tale that all humans are equal before the law and in the eyes of God is a lie, Camilo. I hope you don’t buy into it. Neither the law nor God treats everyone the same.”

— Isabel Allende

400. “Uncle Bruno and I celebrated the miracle of life with every chick that hatched from its egg and every tomato that came from the garden to the table; he taught me to observe and listen attentively, to get my bearings in the woods, to swim in freezing lakes and rivers, to start a fire without a match, to enjoy the pleasure of sinking my face into a juicy watermelon, and to accept the inevitable pain of saying goodbye to people and animals, because there is no life without death, as he always said.”

— Isabel Allende