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My writing comes not from the happy moments, but from struggle and grief.

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
Grief
Struggle
Happy
Comes
Moments
Writing

More quotes by Isabel Allende

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The one that came really easy was the Japanese lover, because he's like a ghost in the book. He's always in the background like a spirit, like a shadow, almost. There's a very delicate line there.
Isabel Allende
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...a fixation is very stubborn: it burrows into the brain and breaks the heart. There are many fixations, but love is the worst.
Isabel Allende
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This is to assuage our conscience, darling she would explain to Blanca. But it doesn't help the poor. They don't need chartiy they need justice.
Isabel Allende
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The media could do a much better job, that's for sure, especially the media that targets women... Human rights? They couldn't care less!
Isabel Allende
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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.
Isabel Allende
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Do you truly believe that life is fair, Senor de la Vega? -No, maestro, but I plan to do everything in my power to make it so.
Isabel Allende
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I'm very optimistic because I think that the real strength of a nation like the United States comes from blending cultures. There's no way that you can close the frontiers anywhere. The borders are there to be violated permanently.
Isabel Allende
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Barrabas came to us by the sea.
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.
Isabel Allende
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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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His calls for justice were lost at the mercy of the wind and human indifference.
Isabel Allende
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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 badly out of balance, in favor of men.
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.
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.
Isabel Allende
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My books are written from personal experience, from memories, and from stories that come to me from all places.
Isabel Allende
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I'm aware of the mystery around us, so I write about coincidences, premonitions, emotions, dreams, the power of nature, magic.
Isabel Allende
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Barrabas came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy.
Isabel Allende
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I try desperately to conquer the transitory nature of my existence, to trap moments before they evenesce, to untangle the confusion of my past. Every instant disappears in a breath and immediately becomes the past reality is ephemeral and changing, pure longing.
Isabel Allende
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I was a lousy journalist. I could never be objective. Sometimes I invented the whole story.
Isabel Allende
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What is truer than truth? Answer: the story.
Isabel Allende