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You spend the first part of your life collecting things ... and the second half getting rid of them.

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
Half
Part
Firsts
First
Things
Collecting
Life
Spend
Second
Getting

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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The fact people think that when you sell a lot of books you are not a serious writer is a great insult to the readership. I get a little angry when people try to say such a thing.
Isabel Allende
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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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In terrible moments, in moments of revolution, of war or repression, of illness or death, people react with incredible strength.
Isabel Allende
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In my private circle I am a mother, grandmother, wife, friend, daughter... the success means nothing to my small tribe.
Isabel Allende
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The world starts to exist, for Americans, when we are in conflict with a place. And then all of a sudden, Afghanistan pops up on the TV screen and it becomes a place. And it exists for three weeks and then it disappears into thin air.
Isabel Allende
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Boredom, Timothy Duane assured me, is nothing more than anger without passion.
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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Only in romance novels or in thrillers people live outside of a social and political context.
Isabel Allende
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You only have what you give. It’s by spending yourself that you become rich.
Isabel Allende
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So firm did Nivea's determination become that she wrote in her diary that she would give up marriage in order to devote herself completely to the struggle for women's suffrage. She was not aware that such a sacrifice would not be necessary, and that she would marry a man for love who would back her up in her political goals.
Isabel Allende
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Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change.
Isabel Allende
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With women the best aphrodisiac is words.
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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Barrabas came to us by the sea.
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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Nice people with common sense do not make interesting characters. They only make good former spouses.
Isabel Allende
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At my age days dissolve like salt in water the day's gone and I don't even know what I've done with the hours.
Isabel Allende
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Nations should be governed by a council of learned men who must answer to the people for their actions.
Isabel Allende
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Empowering women means trusting them.
Isabel Allende