Top 500 Isabel Allende Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “Se requiere una voluntad heroica para mantener todo en su sitio.”

— Isabel Allende

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

— Isabel Allende

403. “El sabio es siempre alegre.”

— Isabel Allende

404. “How long does a man spend dying? What does it mean to say “for ever”? Pablo Neruda.”

— Isabel Allende

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

— Isabel Allende

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

— Isabel Allende

407. “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

408. “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

409. “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

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

— Isabel Allende

411. “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

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

— 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. “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

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

— Isabel Allende

418. “The strong aroma of meat, fried onion, cumin, and baked dough soaked into my skin so deeply that I have never lost it. I will die smelling like an empanada.”

— Isabel Allende

419. “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

420. “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

421. “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

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

— Isabel Allende

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

— Isabel Allende

424. “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

425. “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

426. “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

427. “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

428. “Mi vida se hace al contarla y mi memoria se fija con la escritura;.”

— Isabel Allende

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

— Isabel Allende

430. “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

431. “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

432. “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

433. “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

434. “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

435. “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

436. “Suggestion works miracles.”

— Isabel Allende

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

— Isabel Allende

438. “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

439. “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

440. “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

441. “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

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

— Isabel Allende

443. “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

444. “That night, faced with the incontrovertible results, Pinochet, hardened by the arrogance of absolute power and cut off from reality by many years of complete impunity, proposed another coup to keep himself on the presidential throne indefinitely.”

— Isabel Allende

445. “According to the Dalai Lama, the only hope for peace and prosperity lies in the hands of women in the West.”

— Isabel Allende

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

— Isabel Allende

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

— Isabel Allende

448. “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

449. “I didn’t get to prepare myself as well as I would’ve liked, and now there’s a lady, who must be death, sitting at the foot of my bed, motioning for me to follow her. I can’t distinguish clearly between night and day, and it doesn’t matter, because pain and memory aren’t measured with clocks. The morphine puts me to sleep and transports me to the dimension of dreams and visions.”

— Isabel Allende

450. “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