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I Am An American Citizen And It Is My Home Now. I Like The Usa, Which Is Not A Place Too Many People Have Liked Since Bush. The Us Has A Young Population, And Everything Can Change Within A Year.

-Isabel Allende

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I Am An American

Isabel Allende

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I Am An American Citizen And It Is My Home Now. I Like The Usa, Which Is Not A Place Too Many People Have Liked Since Bush. The Us Has A Young Population, And Everything Can Change Within A Year.

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More From Isabel Allende

You Can Tell The Deepest Truths With The Lies Of Fiction

The Fastest-growing Population In The United States Is The Older People, Because We Are Living Much Longer, Healthier Lives. The Problem Is, Individuals Often Don't Have The Resources To Take Care Of Older People As They Age. This Is Something That Is Happening, And We Have To Deal With It. It Was Happening Also In My Life.

Literary Characters, Like My Grandmother's Apparitions, Are Fragile Beings, Easily Frightened; They Must Be Treated With Care So They Will Feel Comfortable In My Pages

For Women, The Best Aphrodisiacs Are Words. The G-spot Is In The Ears. He Who Looks For It Below There Is Wasting His Time.

At The Most Difficult Moments Of My Life, When It Seemed That Every Door Was Closed To Me, The Taste Of Those Apricots Comes Back To Comfort Me With The Notion That Abundance Is Always Within Reach, If Only One Knows How To Find It.

I Have A Hundred-year-old Aunt Who Aspires To Sainthood, And Whose Only Wish Has Been To Go Into The Convent, But No Congregation, Not Even The Little Sisters Of Charity, Could Tolerate Her For More Than A Few Weeks, So The Family Has Had To Look After Her. Believe Me, There Is Nothing So Insufferable As A Saint, I Wouldn't Sic One On My Worst Enemy.

Women Are The Only Ones Who Will Be Able To Eliminate The Patriarchy, And When That Happens All Of Us Will Win, Men As Much As Women.

After Fifty Most Of The Bullshit Is Gone.

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.

There Is Room In The Human Heart For All The Divinities.

She Regretted Nothing She Had Shared With Her Lover, Nor Was She Ashamed Of The Fires That Had Changed Her Life; Just The Opposite, She Felt That They Had Tempered Her, Made Her Strong, Given Her Pride In Making Decisions And Paying The Consequences For Them.

In Venezuela, When I Was Living There, Crime Was Growing. You Couldn't Feel Safe Anywhere. You Couldn't Leave Your Car In The Street Because It Would Be Stolen. You Coun't Live In Your House If You Didn't Have A High-security Alarm System, Because You Would Be Burglarized Seven Times A Week.

Someone Has Said That Conversation Is Sex For The Soul.

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.

If You Write Nonfiction, A Historical Account Of What Really Happened, First Of All, It's Always White Men Who Do That And You Don't Have The Voices That Are Really Interesting To Me, Of The People Who Are Not Sheltered By The Big Umbrella Of The Establishment.

The World Is A Very Unjust, Unfair Place And We Have To Live With That. Historically, There Is Impunity For Most Crimes.

There's Basically An Element Of Fiction In Everything You Remember. Imagination And Memory Are Almost The Same Brain Processes. When I Write Fiction, I Know That I'm Using A Bunch Of Lies That I've Made Up To Create Some Form Of Truth. When I Write A Memoir, I'm Using True Elements To Create Something That Will Always Be Somehow Fictionalized.

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.

The Idea Of The Book ["the Japanese Lover"] Came In A Conversation That I Had With A Friend Walking In The Streets Of New York. We Were Talking About Our Mothers, And I Was Telling Her How Old My Mother Was, And She Was Telling Me About Her Mother. Her Mother Was Jewish, And She Said That She Was In A Retirement Home And That She Had Had A Friend For 40 Years That Was A Japanese Gardener. This Person Had Been Very Important In My Friend's Upbringing.

He Had Only To Touch Me To Turn My Tears Into Sighs And My Anger To Desire. How Accomodating Love Is; It Forgives Everything.

When A Man's Earning His Living Doing Things He Doesn't Like, He Feels Like A Slave; When He's Doing What He Loves, He Feels Like A Prince.

I Love My Dog Unconditionally, But Never The Man I'm Sleeping With.

When I'm Scared - And I'm Always Scared When I Have To Face An Audience, When I Have To Read A Review, When I Publish A Book...then, I Think Of My Grandfather. My Grandfather Was This Strong, Tough Basque Who Would Never Bend....what Would He Do? Well, He Would Go Ahead, Close His Eyes, And Drive Forward. You Do It And The Spirit That Is Within You....is There.

Barrabas Came To Us By The Sea.

I'm Living In California But I Have A Place That Is Mine In Chile And I Belong There. I Am No Longer An Exile.

I Felt An Unrelenting Restlessness. It Was The First Time I Had Ever Experienced Jealousy, And That Emotion Clung To My Skin Day And Night Like A Dark Stain, A Contamination I Could Not Shed; It Became So Unbearable That When Finally I Rid Myself Of It, I Was Freed Forever Of The Desire To Possess Another Person Or The Temptation Ever To Belong To Anyone.

I Don't Want An Uneventful And Safe Life, I Prefer An Adventurous One.

A Novel Is Like A Window, Open To An Infinite Landscape.

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.

Nothing Changes; We Humans Repeat The Same Sins Over And Over, Eternally.

Twittering And Blogging And All That Is Fine, But There Is No Idea Of How To Phrase Something Beautifully; How To Use Language To Create An Emotion. It's Just Passing Information And Sometimes Very Superficial Information.

My Female Protagonist Will Not Be This Promiscuous, Beautiful, Dark-haired, Thin Lady. It Will Be A Plump, Blond, Healer And So Forth.

The Most Poor And Backward Areas In The World Are Those In Which Women Are Subjugated And Exploited. Improving The Situation Of The Woman Improves The Family, The Community, And By Extension The Whole Country.

We Don't Even Know How Strong We Are Until We Are Forced To Bring That Hidden Strength Forward. In Times Of Tragedy, Of War, Of Necessity, People Do Amazing Things. The Human Capacity For Survival And Renewal Is Awesome.

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.

Just As Daniel Balalcazar Said, It Makes No Sense To Suffer In Advance A Misfortune That May Never Occur.

Youth Is Not A Period In Life But A State Of Mind.

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.

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.

I Would Like To Be With My Husband Together Sitting Somewhere In A Lonely Place In The Woods And Take Something, Maybe Some Pills Or Something, A Magic Potion And Die Together.

We Need A Global Approach To This From All Sides. We Need To Educate People, We Need The Scientists To Create New Technologies, We Need The Engineers To Create The Networks, We Need Every Human Being To Be Aware Of How Precious Water Is And Save It. Everybody Has To Be Involved In A Very Firm And Assertive Way.

I Come From The So-called Third World (what Is The Second)?

Writers Speak For Those Who Are Kept In Silence

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.

Nations Should Be Governed By A Council Of Learned Men Who Must Answer To The People For Their Actions.

In Terrible Moments, In Moments Of Revolution, Of War Or Repression, Of Illness Or Death, People React With Incredible Strength.

The Longer I Live, The More Uninformed I Feel. Only The Young Have An Explanation For Everything.

For Women In My Lifetime Things Have Changed Quite A Bit, But Not Enough. They Have Only Changed For Women That Have Education And Access To Health Care In The Western World. But Look At The Rest Of The World. Still In Many Places, Women Are Sold Into Premature Marriages, Prostitution, Forced Labor; They Are Forced To Have Children That They Cannot Support Or That They Don't Want. They Are Abused, Tortured, Exploited And Even Killed With Impunity.

January 8 Has Been A Lucky Day For Me. I Have Started All My Books On That Day, And All Of Them Have Been Well Received By The Readers. I Write Eight To Ten Hours A Day Until I Have A First Draft, Then I Can Relax A Little. I Am Very Disciplined. I Write In Silence And Solitude. I Light A Candle To Call Inspiration And The Muses, And I Surround Myself With Pictures Of The People I Love, Dead And Alive.

With Women The Best Aphrodisiac Is Words.

I Don't Want Posterity, I Don't Want Anybody To Remember Me In Any Way. I Don't Care About That Because I'll Be Dead. I Think The Spirit Will Move To Some Other State.

She Was One Of Those People Who Was Born For The Greatness Of A Single Love, For Exaggerated Hatred, For Apocalyptic Vengance, And For The Most Sublime Forms Of Heroism But She Was Unable To Shape Her Fate To The Dimensions Of Her Amorous Vocation, So It Was Lived Out As Something Flat And Gray Trapped Between Her Mother's Sickroom Walls, Wretched Tenements, And The Tortured Confessions With Which This Large, Opulent, Hot-blooded Woman Made For Maternity, Abundance, Action, And Ardor- Was Consuming Herself.

People Think That They Will Sit Down And Produce The Great American Novel In One Sitting. It Doesn't Work That Way. This Is A Very Patient And Meticulous Work, And You Have To Do It With Joy And Love For The Process, Not For The Outcome.

Sisters: Talk To Each Other, Be Connected And Informed, Form Women's Circles, Share Your Stories, Work Together, And Take Risks. Together We Are Invincible.

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.

Real Soup Is To The Body What Peace Is To The Soul.

I Think I Was A Feminist Before The Word Was Invented.

True Friendship Resists Time, Distance And Silence.

I Began To Wonder Whether Anything Truly Existed, Whether Reality Wasn't An Unformed And Gelatinous Substance Only Half-captured By My Senses....if That Were True, Each Of Us Was Living In Absolute Isolation. The Thought Terrified Me. I Was Consoled By The Idea That I Could Take That Gelatin And Mold It To Create Anything I Wanted...at Times I Felt That The Universe Fabricated From The Power Of The Imagination Had Stronger And More Lasting Contours Than The Blurred Realm Of The Flesh-and-blood Creatures Around Me.

Americans Have A Warrior's Mentality, Most Of Them. That's How This Society Was Built. The Fact That You Own A Gun And Shoot To Defend Your Life Is A Very American Way Of Thinking.

I Don't Think That We Have To Look Like The Models In The Magazines Because They Are 19 Year Olds And They Have Been Photo Shopped Extensively, Not But Given What I, We Have As The Raw Material, Take Care Of It.

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.

The Most Savory Grape, The One That Produces The Wines With Best Texture And Aroma, The Sweetest And Most Generous, Doesn't Grow In Rich Soil But In Stony Land; The Plant, With A Mother's Obstinacy, Overcomes Obstacles To Thrust Its Roots Deep Into The Ground And Take Advantage Of Every Drop Of Water. That, My Grandmother Explained To Me, Is How Flavors Are Concentrated In The Grape.

Eros Is Very Close To Death. And Both Things, In A Way, Balance Each Other.

Catholics Form A Majority In Chile, Although There Are More And More Evangelicals And Pentacostals Who Irritate Everyone Because They Have A Direct Understanding With God While Everyone Else Must Pass Through The Priestly Bureaucracy.

It Is Absurd To Imagine That Any Child Will Be Able To Earn A Living, Let Alone Contribute To Resolving Our World's Complex Problems, Without Knowing How To Read And Write. My Foundation Supports The National Writing Project So That Teachers Can Be More Effective In Their Efforts To Improve Literacy For All Students.

I Am An American Citizen And It Is My Home Now. I Like The Usa, Which Is Not A Place Too Many People Have Liked Since Bush. The Us Has A Young Population, And Everything Can Change Within A Year.

Every Time I Asked A Question, That Magnificent Teacher, Instead Of Giving The Answer, Showed Me How To Find It. She Taught Me To Organise My Thoughts, To Do Research, To Read And Listen, To Seek Alternatives, To Resolve Old Problems With New Solutions, To Argue Logically. Above All, She Taught Me Not To Believe Anything Blindly, To Doubt, And To Question Even What Seemed Irrefutably True, Such As Man's Superiority Over Woman, Or One Race Or Social Class Over Another.

I'm Open To Love, And I Think That I Will Fall In Love With A Wonderful Man.

Falling In Love

My Books Are Written From Personal Experience, From Memories, And From Stories That Come To Me From All Places.

Many Children Fly Like Birds, Guess Other People's Dreams, And Speak With Ghosts, But ... They All Outgrow It When They Lose Their Innocence.

Young Women Don't Want To Be Called Feminists Because It's Not Sexy And Ah They Think That Their Mothers And Grandmothers Have Achieved Everything They Want. They Don't Know How Poor Women Live, How Women In Rural Places Live, How 80 Percent Of Women In The World Are The Poorest Of The Poor, How Still There Are 27 Million Slaves, And Most Of Them Women And Girls.

I Get Hundreds Of Emails Daily And A Lot Of Feedback From People That Are Reading Or Have Read My Books. When I'm Writing, Or In My Daily Life, I Just Think Of The Work. I Love To Tell A Story, But I Might Work With A Story To Make It The Best I Can Without Thinking Of How Many People Will Read It Or If It Will Influence Anybody.

We Have All The Technology To Record Things In The Streets. Now The Historians Cannot Twist It Or Change It, Because We Have Cellular Phones Or Video Cameras, And We Are Filming In The Streets What's Going On. We Have The Voices Of Everybody Recorded. There's Too Much Recording And I Think That's Wonderful.

As My Popo Used To Say, Life Is A Tapestry We Weave Day By Day With Threads Of Different Colors, Some Heavy And Dark, Others Thin And Bright, All The Threads Having Their Uses. The Stupid Things I Did Are Already In The Tapestry, Indelible, But I’m Not Going To Be Weighed Down By Them Till I Die. What’s Done Is Done; I Have To Look Ahead.

A Man Does What He Can; A Woman Does What A Man Cannot.

Two Thirds Of The Work In The World Is Done By Women. Women Own 1 Percent Of The Assets. Young Women Are Sold Into Prostitution, Forced Labour, Premature Marriage, Forced To Have Children They Don't Want Or They Can't Support. They're Abused, Raped, Beaten Up. Domestic Violence Is Supposed To Be A Cultural Problem. They Are The First Victims Of War, Fundamentalism, Conflict, Recession. And Young Women Who Have Access To Education And Health Care And Have Resources Think That Everything Was Done, They Don't Have To Worry.

Show Up, Show Up, Show Up, And After A While The Muse Shows Up, Too. If She Doesn’t Show Up Invited, Eventually She Just Shows Up

You Spend The First Part Of Your Life Collecting Things ... And The Second Half Getting Rid Of Them.

Collecting Things

If You Change The Way You Tell Your Own Story, You Can Change The Colour And Create A Life In Technicolour.

And I Am Not One Of Those Women Who Trips Twice Over The Same Stone.

Seated By Her Side In The Narrow Cabin, Pressing Cold Compresses To Her Forehead And Holding Her While She Vomited, He Felt Profoundly Happy.

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.

I Was A Lousy Journalist. I Could Never Be Objective. Sometimes I Invented The Whole Story.

I Was Born In The Middle Of World War Ii, The Middle Of The Holocaust; I Was Born When There Was No Declaration Of Human Rights, When Feminism Was Not An Issue, When Children Were Working In Factories. I Mean, Today's World Is A Better Place!

...when Everything Else Fails, We Communicate In The Language Of The Stars

You Have The Health You Deserve.

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.

And The Truth Is That If A Writer Is Successful, You Gain Readers. It Benefits All The Writers. It's Important For All The Writers That As Many Of Us As Possible Be Successful.

In The United States, The Fact That You Can Start Again Gives A Lot Of Energy And Strength And Youth To This Country. That Is Why It's So Powerful In Many Ways, And So Creative.

I Need To Remember To Overcome.

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.

The Fear Is Not Real, Dil Bahadur; It Is Only In Your Mind, Like All Other Things. Our Thoughts Form What We Believe To Be Reality.

Each Of Us Chooses The Tone For Telling His Or Her Own Story. I Would Like To Choose The Durable Clarity Of A Platinum Print, But Nothing In My Destiny Possesses The Luminosity. I Live Among Diffuse Shadings, Veiled Mysteries, Uncertainties; The Tone Of Telling My Life Is Closer To That Of A Portrait In Sepia.

I Have Travelled All Over The World And One Thing That Amazes Me Is That I Can Communicate With People. My Story May Be Different But Emotionally We Are All The Same.

Memory Is Fiction. We Select The Brightest And The Darkest, Ignoring What We Are Ashamed Of, And So Embroider The Broad Tapestry Of Our Lives.

I Have Learned Many Things In The 30 Years That I Have Been Writing.

One Of The Characteristics Of North American Culture Is That You Can Always Start Again. You Can Always Move Forward, Cross A Border Of A State Or A City Or A County, And Move West, Most Of The Time West. You Leave Behind Guilt, Past Traditions, Memories. You Are As If Born Again, In The Sense Of The Snake: You Leave Your Skin Behind And You Begin Again. For Most People In The World, That Is Totally Impossible.

...a Fixation Is Very Stubborn: It Burrows Into The Brain And Breaks The Heart. There Are Many Fixations, But Love Is The Worst.

My Worst Flaw Is That I Tell Secrets, My Own And Everybody Else's.

The Hardest Thing Of Love Is To Let Go.

Words Are Not That Important When You Recognize Intentions.

Writing Is A Calling, Not A Choice.

Love Is A Free Contract That Begins With A Spark And Can End The Same Way.

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.

The Connection That I Have With My Readers Makes Me Very Happy, And Gives Meaning To The Strange Profession Of Writing

In My Lifetime, The World Has Become Better, Not Worse. And The World Is Moving, Very Slowly But Surely With More Democracy And More Liberal Way Of Thinking, More Inclusion And More Diversity.

I Was Born In The Middle Of The Second World War When The United States Dropped Their Atomic Bombs In Hiroshima And Nagasaki, When Millions Of People Were Dying In Concentration Camps, When Half The Planet Were Colonies That Belonged To Empires. The Word Feminism Didn't Exist. And In My Lifetime I Have Seen All These Things Improved, Changed. We Are More Connected, More Informed. We Can Fight Against Stuff Together In Ways We Couldn't Before.

Hiroshima And Nagasaki

The Writer Of Good Will Carries A Lamp To Illuminate The Dark Corners.

The First Few Months Of My Life Of Every Year Are In Total Retreat. I Don't See Anybody Except My Husband And My Dog, I Don't Talk To Anybody, And I Just Write.

All Stories Interest Me, And Some Haunt Me Until I End Up Writing Them.

I Met A Guy, Very Exotic To Me - He Was Blonde With Blue Eyes - And I Just Had A Fling That Turned Out To Be Love. I Moved To San Francisco To Spend A Week With Him And Get Him Out Of My System; I'm Still Here 26 Years Later.

Heart Is What Drives Us And Determines Our Fate.

Happiness Is Pure Kitch; We Come Into The World To Suffer And Learn.

We Only Appreciate What We Have When We Lose It.

I'm Not Willing To Sign A Contract. They Want Everything. They Want The Rights To Do The Movie And Everything Else They Can Think Of, Forever. There's No Limit To The Contract. In This Universe And Universes To Be Discovered - I'm Not Making This Up - This Is In The Contract.

Writing Is A Process, A Journey Into Memory And The Soul.

Nice People With Common Sense Do Not Make Interesting Characters. They Only Make Good Former Spouses.

My Husband, Who Is A Lawyer, Is Very Careful With Words And With The Truth. He Thinks That The Truth Exists, And It's Something That Is Beyond Questioning, Which I Think Is Totally Absurd. I Have Several Versions Of How We Met And How Wonderful He Was And All That. At Least Twenty. And I'm Sure That They Are All True. He Has One. And I'm Positive That It's Not True.

A Book Is Not An End In Itself; It Is Only A Way To Touch Someone - A Bridge Extended Across A Space Of Loneliness And Obscurity - And Sometimes It Is A Way Of Winning Other People To Our Causes.

Heroism Is A Badly Remunerated Occupation, And Often It Leads To An Early End, Which Is Why It Appeals To Fanatics Or Persons With An Unhealthy Fascination With Death.

She Intended To Swallow The World And He Lived Crushed By Reality.

Dying Is Not Easy. It's A Very Hard Transition.

I Was Not Supposed To Be In Any Way A Liberated Person. I Was A Female Born In The '40s In A Patriarchal Family; I Was Supposed To Marry And Make Everyone Around Me Happy.

We've Lost Our Sense Of Ethics; We Live In A World Of Small-mindedness, Of Gratification Without Happiness And Actions Without Meaning.

Music Is A Wind That Blows Away The Years, Memories, And Fear, That Crouching Animal I Carry Inside Me.

Roots Are Not In Landscape Or A Country, Or A People, They Are Inside You.

I Tend To See The Similarities In People And Not The Differences.

My Writing Comes Not From The Happy Moments, But From Struggle And Grief.

I Never Said I Wanted A 'happy' Life But An Interesting One. From Separation And Loss, I Have Learned A Lot. I Have Become Strong And Resilient, As Is The Case Of Almost Every Human Being Exposed To Life And To The World. We Don't Even Know How Strong We Are Until We Are Forced To Bring That Hidden Strength Forward.

The Biggest Straitjacket Is All The Prejudices That We Carry Around, And All The Fears. But What If We Just Surrender To The Fear? There Are Things Greater Than Fear. The Great, Wonderful Quality Of Human Beings Is That We Can Overcome Even Absolute Terror, And We Do.

One Of The Things That Always Comes Up In My Writing Is The Search For Freedom, Especially In Women. I Always Write About Women Who Are Marginalized, Who Have No Means Or Resources And Somehow Manage To Get Out Of Those Situations With Incredible Strength - And That Is More Important Than Anything.

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.

You Can't Find Someone Who Doesn't Want To Be Found.

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.

If We Don't Begin By Imagining The Perfect Society, How Shall We Create One?

If, For Example, I Saw My Grandparents Or My Daughter For An Instant, Would I Recognize Them? Probably Not, Because In Looking So Hard For A Way To Keep Them Alive, Remembering Them In The Most Minimal Details, I Have Been Changing Them, Adorning Them With Qualities They May Not Have Had. I Have Given Them A Destiny Much More Complex Than The Ones They Lived.

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.

I'm Surrounded By Young People. I'm Always Now The Oldest And The Shortest Person In The Room.

There Is No Death, Daughter. People Die Only When We Forget Them.

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.

Agosins Poetic Language Engages The Reader In A Mesmerizing Journey Of Inward Reflection And Exile.

We Live In An Era Where Masses Of People Come And Go Across A Hostile Planet, Desolate And Violent. Refugees, Emigrants, Exiles, Deportees. We Are A Tragic Contingent.

For Real Change, We Need Feminine Energy In The Management Of The World. We Need A Critical Number Of Women In Positions Of Power, And We Need To Nurture The Feminine Energy In Men.

I've Been A Foreigner For The Past Twenty Years. I Don't Have Roots Anymore. My Roots Are In My Memory And My Writing. That's Why Memory Is So Important. Who Are You But What You Can Remember?

My Son, The Holy Church Is On The Right, But Jesus Christ Was Always On The Left.

Writing Is A Constant Exercise In Longing.

Having A Point To Start Is Important. You Know That When You Decide To Write Something It's Like A Commitment. It's Like Falling In Love.

Falling In Love

Far Away From My Country I Would Be Like Those Trees They Chop Down At Christmastime, Those Poor Rootless Pines That Last A Little While And Then Die.

How Accommodating Love Is; It Forgives Everything.

I Don't Think I Would Be A Writer If I Had Stayed In Chile. I Would Be Trapped In The Chores, In The Family, In The Person That People Expected Me To Be.

Humanity Has This Need To Hear Stories Because They Connect Us With Other People, They Teach Us About Our Own Feelings. We Feel Less Lonely When We See Other People Going Through The Same Things, Even If They're Fictional Characters.

The Fact That I Am A Writer Comes From The Experience Of Being Cut Away From My Roots And Living In Venezuela, Where I Couldn't Find A Place For Myself, For Years And Years.

Giving Women Education, Work, The Ability To Control Their Own Income, Inherit And Own Property, Benefits The Society. If A Woman Is Empowered, Her Children And Her Family Will Be Better Off. If Families Prosper, The Village Prospers, And Eventually So Does The Whole Country.

The Two Moments Are Much Alike: Birth And Death Are Made Of The Same Fabric.

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.

When My Daughter Paula Died, I Was In The Deepest Pain, And My Mother Said, "this Kind Of Sorrow Is Like A Long, Narrow, Dark Channel. You Have To Walk This Channel Alone And Be Sure That There Is Light At The Other Ending. Just Keep Walking."

Although Women Do Two-thirds Of The World's Labor, They Own Less Than One Percent Of The World's Assets.

Give, Give, Give - What Is The Point Of Having Experience, Knowledge Or Talent If I Don't Give It Away? Of Having Stories If I Don't Tell Them To Others? Of Having Wealth If I Don't Share It? I Don't Intend To Be Cremated With Any Of It! It Is In Giving That I Connect With Others, With The World And With The Divine.

There Is No Light Without Shadow, Just As There Is No Happiness Without Pain.

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.

Reading Is Like Looking Through Several Windows Which Open To An Infinite Landscape....for Me Life Without Reading Would Be Like Being In Prison, It Would Be As If My Spirit Were In A Straightjacket; Life Would Be A Very Dark And Narrow Place.

You Are My Angel And My Damnation; In Your Presence I Reach Divine Ecstasy And In Your Absence I Descent To Hell.

You Write A Book And It's Like Putting A Message In A Bottle And Throwing It In The Ocean. You Don't Know If It Will Ever Reach Any Shores. And There, You See, Sometimes It Falls In The Hands Of The Right Person.

All Stories Interest Me, And Some Haunt Me Until I End Up Writing Them. Certain Themes Keep Coming Up: Justice, Loyalty, Violence, Death, Political And Social Issues, Freedom.

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.

Only In Romance Novels Or In Thrillers People Live Outside Of A Social And Political Context.

Boredom, Timothy Duane Assured Me, Is Nothing More Than Anger Without Passion.

As I Travel Through Life, I Gather Experiences That Lie Imprinted On The Deepest Strata Of Memory, And There They Ferment, Are Transformed, And Sometimes Rise To The Surface And Sprout Like Strange Plants From Other Worlds. What Is The Fertile Humus Of The Subconscious Composed Of? Why Are Certain Images Converted Into Recurrent Themes In Nightmares Or Writing?

Conceit Is A Privilege Of The Ignorant; The Wise Man Is Humble Because He Knows How Little He Knows.

Today's Girls Are Tomorrow's Women - And Leaders.

Fear Is Inevitable, I Have To Accept That, But I Cannot Allow It To Paralyze Me.

At Times I Felt That The Universe Fabricated From The Power Of The Imagination Had Stronger And More Lasting Contours Than The Blurred Realm Of The Flesh-and-blood Creatures Around Me.

I Don't Think Of Literature As An End In Itself. It's Just A Way Of Communicating Something.

It Is A Wonderful Truth That Things We Want Most In Life-a Sense Of Purpose, Happiness And Hope-are Most Easily Attained By Giving Them To Others.

Friendship Is All About Trust And Sharing. Passionate And Romantic Love Is All About Sex And Emotions. You Have To Try To Combine Those, I Think. The Great Marriages, The Great Couples I Know, Have Both.

After A Few Months Without Writing, Months I've Lived Turned Outward... I Fear Going Deaf, Not Being Able To Hear The Silence.

My Name Is Eva, Which Means 'life,' According To A Book Of Names My Mother Consulted. I Was Born In The Back Room Of A Shadowy House, And Grew Up Amidst Ancient Furniture, Books In Latin, And Human Mummies, But None Of Those Things Made Me Melancholy, Because I Came Into The World With A Breath Of The Jungle In My Memory.

We Want A World Where Life Is Preserved, And The Quality Of Life Is Enriched For Everybody, Not Only For The Privileged.

I Had A Very Rough Childhood And Not A Happy One And By Age 15 I Was An Old Person In Many Ways. I Knew That I Had To Take Care Of Myself, I Um And I Always Did.

We Are Too Connected. There's Noise In Our Heads All The Time.

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.

Erotica Is Using A Feather; Pornograpy Is Using The Whole Chicken.

I Like Historical Fiction. I Fell In Love With New Orleans The First Time I Visited It. And I Wanted To Place A Story In New Orleans.

When You Make An Omelet, As When You Make Love, Affection Counts For More Than Technique.

I See That In The Future, Things That We Have Lost In The Past Will Be Recovered. There's A Search For Those Things, A Search For Spirituality, For Nature, For The Goddess Religions, For Family And Human Bonding. All That Has Been Lost In This Industrial Era. People Are In Desperate Need Of Those Things. I Don't Think The World Will Destroy Itself In A Nuclear Cataclysm. On The Contrary, We Have The Capacity To Save Ourselves And Save The Planet, And We Will Use It.

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.

Unconditional Love

You Only Have What You Give. It’s By Spending Yourself That You Become Rich.

Write What Should Not Be Forgotten.

Life Is Very Mysterious And There Are Many Things We Don't Know. And There Are Elements Of Magic Realism In Every Culture, Everywhere. It's Just Accepting That We Don't Know Everything And Everything Is Possible.

Fear Is Like A Black Cavern That Is Terrifying. Once You Enter The Cavern And Explore It, You Realize That You Can Get Out Of It, Go Through It And Get Out Of It. Then There's Another Cavern That Is Just As Big And Terrifying, And You Just Go In And Dwell In It And See What Is The Worst That Can Happen.

If I Didn't Write My Soul Would Dry Up And Die.

Affection Is Like The Noonday Sun; It Does Not Need The Presence Of Another To Be Manifest.

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.

I Seek Truth And Beauty In The Transparency Of An Autumn Leaf, In The Perfect Form Of A Seashell On The Beach, In The Curve Of A Woman's Back, In The Texture Of An Ancient Tree Trunk, But Also In The Elusive Forms Of Reality.

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.

Writing Is My Job. I Don't Think Of It As Art.

Empowering Women Means Trusting Them.

Empowering Women

I Write To Understand My Circumstances, To Sort Out The Confusion Of Reality, To Exorcise My Demons. But Most Of All, I Write Because I Love It!

I Went To A Mystery Writers Conference ... And I Learned A Lot Not Only From The Faculty - And In The Faculty We Had Forensic Doctors, Detectives, Policemen, Experts In Guns, Etc. - But From The Questions Of The Students.

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