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I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet, so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me.

Isabel Allende

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Isabel Allende
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: August 2
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
City of the Kings
Isabel Allende Llona
Times
Ancient
Heck
Family
Nobody
Raging
Knew
Reached
Born
Wonder
Feminist
Ends
Term
Rage
World
Five
Catholic
Age
Conservative
Patriarchal
Wrong
Although
Chile

More quotes by Isabel Allende

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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.
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Feminism has never been sexy, but let me assure you that it never stopped me from flirting, and I have seldom suffered from lack of men.
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I've been so thoroughly incorporated into the California culture that I practice meditation and go to a therapist, even though I always set a trap: during my meditation I invent stories to keep from being bored, and in therapy I invent stories to keep from boring the psychologist.
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Love is a free contract that begins with a spark and can end the same way.
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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
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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.
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Feminism is dated? Yes, for privileged women like my daughter and all of us here today, but not for most of our sisters in the rest of the world who are still forced into premature marriage, prostitution, forced labor - they have children that they don't want or they cannot feed.
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We only appreciate what we have when we lose it.
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It's good for a writer to come from journalism because it gives you the tools. A journalist knows that he or she can lose the reader in six lines, so try to keep the attention of the reader. Also, you learn to research, and to conduct an interview - to extract from the person whatever you need from that person.
Isabel Allende
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Writing is a process, a journey into memory and the soul.
Isabel Allende
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Most people feel younger than their age, but the culture values youth, success, beauty, productivity. There is no space in this culture for older people.
Isabel Allende
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Silence before being born, silence after death: life is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences.
Isabel Allende
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I love fiction because in fiction you go into the thoughts of people, the little people, the people who were defeated, the poor, the women, the children that are never in history books.
Isabel Allende
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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.
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I think the spirit survives when we die, and nothing is wasted in nature and just as our material body disintegrates and becomes something else in the soil. The spirit becomes something else, reunites with a spiritual force that is out there in the universe. Not as individuals but as part of this spirituality.
Isabel Allende
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I'm not a fan of mysteries, so to prepare for this experience of writing a mystery I started reading the most successful ones in the market in 2012. And I realized I cannot write that kind of book. It's too gruesome, too violent, too dark there's no redemption there.
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That was a good time in my life, in spite of having the sensation of floating on a cloud, surrounded by both lies and things left unspoken. Occasionally I thought I glimpsed the truth, but soon found myself once again lost in a forest of ambiguities.
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People come from internally, from other places in the United States, but also displaced people from other parts of the world. They come here. If you walk in the streets of San Francisco, you hear all the languages. You smell all the foods. You listen to the music from everywhere. There's great diversity.
Isabel Allende
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His lifetime was less than a fraction of a second in infinity. Or maybe he did not even exist maybe human beings, the planets, everything in Creation were a dream...an illusion. He smiled with humility when he remembered.
Isabel Allende
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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