Isabel Allende

1. “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

2. “Write what should not be forgotten.“

– Isabel Allende

3. “You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend, or not.“

– Isabel Allende

4. “Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.“

– Isabel Allende

5. “We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test.“

– Isabel Allende

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

– Isabel Allende

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

– Isabel Allende

8. “It is a wonderful truth that things we want most in life… are most easily attained by giving them to others.”

– Isabel Allende

9. “Society decides when we get old. But the spirit never ages.”

– Isabel Allende

10. “True friendship resists time, distance and silence.”

– Isabel Allende

11. “I am happier when I love than when I am loved. I adore my husband, my son, my grandchildren, my mother, my dog, and frankly, I don’t know if they even like me. But who cares? Loving them is my joy.“

– Isabel Allende

12. “You can tell the deepest truths with the lies of fiction.”

– Isabel Allende

13. “My worst flaw is that I tell secrets, my own and everybody else’s.“

– Isabel Allende

14. “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

15. “I can promise you that women working together – linked, informed and educated – can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.”

– Isabel Allende

16. “Peace requires everyone to be in the circle – wholeness, inclusion.“

– Isabel Allende

17. “Most people feel younger than their age, but the culture values youth, success, beauty, productivity…“

– Isabel Allende

18. “I am happier when I love than when I am loved. I adore my husband, my son, my grandchildren, my mother, my dog, and frankly, I don’t know if they even like me. But who cares? Loving them is my joy.“

– Isabel Allende

19. “We’ve lost our sense of ethics; we live in a world of small-mindedness, of gratification without happiness and actions without meaning.“

– Isabel Allende

20. “We have to defend democracy, but remember that not everything is politics. Without science, industry, and technology, no progress is possible, and without music and art, there’s no soul.“

– Isabel Allende

City of Beasts Quotes

1. “The longer I live, the more uninformed I feel. Only the young have an explanation for everything.” 

2. “Before you conquer the mountain, you must learn to overcome your fear.”

3. “My father says that fear is good; it’s the body’s alarm system, it warns us of danger. But sometimes danger can’t be avoided, and then you have to forget about being afraid.” 

4. “Words are not that important when you recognize intentions.” 

5. “You’re one of a kind, Kate!” Alex said, and smiled.
“We all are, Alexander.” 

The House of the Spirits Quotes

1. “Land is something one should never sell. It is the only thing left when all else is gone.” 

2. “This is to assuage our conscience, darling” she would explain to Blanca. “But it doesn’t help the poor. They don’t need charity; they need justice.”

3. “We always think things like that only happen elsewhere,” said Miguel, “until they happen to us too.” 

4. “She was considered timid and morose. Only in the country, her skin tanned by the sun and her belly full of ripe fruit, running through the fields with Pedro Tercero, was she smiling and happy. Her mother said that that was the real Blanca, and that the other one, the one back in the city, was a Blanca in hibernation.” 

5. “You can’t find someone who doesn’t want to be found.”

6. “I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously.” 

Paula Quotes

1. “If I write something, I fear it will happen, and if I love too much, I fear I will lose that person; nevertheless, I cannot stop writing or loving…“

2. “The two moments are much alike: birth and death are made of the same fabric.”

3. “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.” 

4. “Time moves so slowly. Or perhaps it doesn’t move at all and it is we who pass through it.”

5. “Remember that all the others are more afraid than you.”

A Long Petal of the Sea Quotes

1. “Nothing can grow in the shade of secrets, she would say, love needs light and space to flourish.” 

2. “My heart is broken, he told himself. It was at that moment he understood the profound meaning of that common phrase: he thought he heard the sound of glass breaking and felt that the essence of his being was pouring out until he was empty, with no memory of the past, no awareness of the present, no hope for the future.” 

3. “So much hatred, so much cruelty . . . I don’t understand,’ said Victor. His mouth was dry and the ords stuck in his throat.
‘We can all turn into savages if we’re given a rifle and an order,’ said another prisoner who had come over to them.” 

4. “Going around in a sulk will get you nowhere. Pain is unavoidable, but suffering is optional.”