Top 500 Isabel Allende Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “How long does a man spend dying? What does it mean to say “for ever”? Pablo Neruda.”

— Isabel Allende

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

— Isabel Allende

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

— Isabel Allende

404. “Women’s creativity is called craft and is sold cheap; when men create, the result is called art and is costly, like Maurizio Cattelan’s banana taped to a Miami art gallery wall with a price tag of US$120,000.”

— Isabel Allende

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

— Isabel Allende

406. “Dios no nos manda sufrimientos sin la fortaleza para soportarlos.”

— Isabel Allende

407. “She was facing exile now with the same courage as she had done then, without complaining, without looking back, her eyes fixed on the future.”

— Isabel Allende

408. “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

409. “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

410. “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

411. “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

412. “El primer paso es admitir que uno carece de control sobre su vida.”

— Isabel Allende

413. “Passion is unbridled enthusiasm, exuberant energy, and determined devotion to someone or something.”

— Isabel Allende

414. “La felicidad consiste en alcanzar aquello que hemos esperado por mucho tiempo.”

— Isabel Allende

415. “Neantul este plin de toate lucrurile universului. E neant si, in acelasi timp, e totul. Lumina sacramentala si intuneric nepatruns. Sunt neantul, sunt tot ce este, sunt in fiecare frunza, in fiecare picatura de roua, in fiecare graunte de cenusa purtat de ape, sunt Paula si sunt eu insami, nu sunt nimic si sunt totul, in viata asta si in celelalte, sunt nemuritoare.”

— Isabel Allende

416. “We didn’t experience anything like the Cuban or Russian revolutions here, we merely had a few years of a progressive government, like many that exist today in Europe. We were in the wrong hemisphere and ahead of our time, which is why we paid so dearly for it.”

— Isabel Allende

417. “Privacy is a luxury of the well-to-do because most Chileans have none. Middle-class families and below live in very close quarters, in many homes several people sleep in the same bed. When there is more than one room, the dividing walls are so thin that every sigh comes right through.”

— Isabel Allende

418. “Creo que ha decidido morirse, y la ciencia no tiene remedio alguno contra ese mal.”

— Isabel Allende

419. “In the past, adulthood arrived at twenty, middle age at forty, and old age at fifty. Today adolescence lasts until past thirty or forty, maturity comes around sixty, and old age starts at eighty. This is the baby boomers’ achievement. Over the last half century they have redefined many cultural aspects for their convenience.”

— Isabel Allende

420. “With age, you acquire a certain humility, Alexander. The longer I live, the more uninformed I feel. Only the young have an explanation for everything. At your age, you can afford to commit the sin of arrogance, and it doesn’t matter much if you look ridiculous,” his grandmother lectured.”

— Isabel Allende

421. “He maintained that magic, like cooking and religion, was a particularly feminine affair...”

— Isabel Allende

422. “En las largas horas de silencio se me atropellan los recuerdos, todo me ha sucedido en el mismo instante, como si mi vida entera fuera una sola imagen ininteligible.”

— Isabel Allende

423. “I do not fear my vulnerability because I no longer confuse it with weakness.”

— Isabel Allende

424. “The truth is that men control political and economic power – they make the laws and apply them at their convenience –.”

— Isabel Allende

425. “I can’t criticize mothers’ obsessive love because that’s probably the only reason why species have survived, from bats to technocrats. Nor.”

— Isabel Allende

426. “El primer amor es como la viruela, deja huellas imborrables.”

— Isabel Allende

427. “You’ve completely forgotten what it takes to raise a child, Mr. Bogart. And this girl is traumatized – she misses her mother, she’s been pulled away from everything she knows, her family, her friends, her school, her community, her language. Can you imagine what that must be like?”

— Isabel Allende

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

— Isabel Allende

429. “What’s at the root of this explosive mixture of desire for and hatred of women? Why are aggression and harassment not civil rights or human rights concerns? Why are women silenced? Why isn’t there a declared war against such violence, like the war against drugs, terrorism, or crime? The answer is obvious: Violence and fear are instruments of control.”

— Isabel Allende

430. “Since 1973, the year of the military coup that changed so many things, situating has become a little more complex because in the first three minutes of conversation you also have to guess whether the person you’re speaking to was for or against the dictatorship.”

— Isabel Allende

431. “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

432. “Girls are denied the right to be angry and to thrash about.”

— Isabel Allende

433. “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

434. “I was so drained I felt as if I were staring through a telescope at the light of a star dead for a million years.”

— Isabel Allende

435. “Cada persona nace con una sola gracia la felicidad consiste en descubrirla a tiempo...”

— Isabel Allende

436. “Tijdens de lange reis in het voetspoor van een onmogelijke romance had Eliza iets verworden dat even waardevol was als de liefde: vrijheid.”

— Isabel Allende

437. “Respect, compliance, and fear, which are instilled in women from infancy, are so detrimental to us that we don’t even know our own power. So great is that power, the patriarchy’s goal is to crush it by any means, including the worst forms of violence. These methods are so successful that frequently the most rabid defenders of the patriarchy are women.”

— Isabel Allende

438. “Estaba harta de contemplar desde abajo los vellos de la nariz del resto de la humanidad.”

— Isabel Allende

439. “She learned to bear her troubles alone and with dignity, convinced no one was interested in other people’s problems, and that pain borne in silence eventually evaporated.”

— Isabel Allende

440. “It’s hard to make money working; and the harder the work, the worse the pay. It takes effort not to lose everything and end up on the street. It’s easy, on the other hand, to get rich without producing anything, moving money from one place to another, speculating, taking advantage of stock opportunities, investing in the hard work of others.”

— Isabel Allende

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

— Isabel Allende

442. “Sometimes our fates take turns that we don’t notice in the moment they occur, but if you live as long as I have they become clear in hindsight. At each crossroads or fork we must decide which direction to take. These decisions may determine the course of the rest of our lives.”

— Isabel Allende

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

— Isabel Allende

444. “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

445. “In 1920 a political leader was elected who for the first time preached social justice: Arturo Alessandri Palma, nicknamed The Lion. He came from a middle-class family of second-generation Italian immigrants.”

— Isabel Allende

446. “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

447. “Considering the circumstances, it was a rather good kiss. In reality, it would have been perfect if they both had not been coughing from the smoke.”

— Isabel Allende

448. “It was a long week of penitence and fasting, during which there were no card games and no music that might lead to lust or abandon; and within the limits of possibility, the strictest sadness and chastity were observed, even though it was precisely at this time that the forked tail of the devil pricked most insistently at Catholic flesh.”

— Isabel Allende

449. “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

450. “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