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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

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I Am Happier When

Isabel Allende

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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.

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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.

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.

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

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.

After Fifty Most Of The Bullshit Is Gone.

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

What Is Truer Than Truth? Answer: The Story.

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 Like Hillary Clinton A Lot. I Know Her.

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.

You Can Tell The Deepest Truths With The Lies Of Fiction

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.

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

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 Like Making Love. Don't Worry About The Orgasm, Just Concentrate On The Process.

True Friendship Resists Time, Distance And Silence.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Silence Before Being Born, Silence After Death: Life Is Nothing But Noise Between Two Unfathomable Silences.

Empowering Women Means Trusting Them.

Empowering Women

I Am Very Grateful For The Success, Because It Has Given Me The Freedom To Write Without Pressure, In My Own Way, And Has Enabled Me To Maintain My Family And Educate My Children And Grandchildren, As Well As To Create A Foundation To Empower Women And Girls.

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.

Sex Is The Instrument And Love The Music.

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.

I Was A Very Bad Journalist. Awful. I Would Just Invent Everything. If I Did An Interview, I Had A Preconception Of What That Person Should Say And I Would Put My Words In His Mouth.

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

Those Who Seek The Truth Run The Risk Of Finding It.

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.

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

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.

They Could Not Understand The Advantage Of Living Contrary To Their Inclinations In This World In Order To Enjoy A Hypothetical Well-being In Another.

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

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.

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

My Grandfather Was Dying, And Told The Family He Had Decided To Die. ... At That Moment I Wanted So Badly To Write And Tell Him That He Was Never Going To Die, That Somehow He Would Always Be Present In My Life, Because He Had A Theory That Death Didn't Exist, Only Forgetfulness Did. He Believed That If You Can Keep People In Your Memory, They Will Live Forever. That's What He Did With My Grandmother.

My Life Is About Ups And Downs, Great Joys And Great Losses.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Wishes And Fears Are Illusions, Dil Bahadur, Not Realities. You Must Practice Detachment.

I Am Very Optimistic Because I Have Seen The Changes In My Lifetime. I Have Seen The World Change For The Better. We Always Think That Present Times Is Terrible, That What's Happening Today, It Was Never Worse, That The World Is Going In The Most Awful Direction. But I Think That The World That My Grandchildren Will Have Will Be Better Than The One I Had When I Turned 20.

Nothing's As Dangerous As Power With Impunity.

Only That, Nothing More - A Tiny Beam Of Light To Show Some Hidden Aspect Of Reality, To Help Decipher And Understand It And Thus To Initiate, If Possible, A Change In The Conscience Of Some Readers.

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

Falling In Love

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

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.

Writing Is A Constant Exercise In Longing.

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.

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

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

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

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.

I Don't Want To Be Looking Inside My Ego, My Stuff, My Achievements, My Me, Me, Me, Me, I Hate That Stuff. I Just Want To Be Out There Eh To The Last Day Of My Life Ah Interested In The World, In Causes, In Helping Other People. Um That Doesn't Mean That I Don't Have A Spiritual Practice, That I Don't Look At My Own Soul, That I Don't Prepare Myself For The That Transition That Death Is But I Cannot Sit In Meditation To Contemplate My Navel For The Rest Of My Life. That Would Be Boring For Me.

From Journalism I Learned To Write Under Pressure, To Work With Deadlines, To Have Limited Space And Time, To Conduct And Interview, To Find Information, To Research, And Above All, To Use Language As Efficiently As Possible And To Remember Always That There Is A Reader Out There.

What I Fear Most Is Power With Impunity. I Fear Abuse Of Power, And The Power To Abuse.

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.

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.

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.

No Complaining About How Hard It Is To Write, We Are All So, So Lucky To Write, To Sit Down, Inside, And Write Words On Paper. There Is No Greater Freedom, No Greater Good, Nothing That Brings More Joy.

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.

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.

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

Fiction Happens In The Belly, It Doesn't Happen In The Brain.

Cooking Can Be Like Foreplay.

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."

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

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

I'm An Expert. I Can Kill Anybody And Not Be Caught.

The Success Occurs In A Place Outside Of Me, And Doesn't Touch Me On An Intimate Level. I Live In My Own Skin, I Have Not Changed Greatly, I Remain The Same Woman.

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!

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.

In My Book Tours I Get To Meet An Audience Every Night. And I See That There Are Mostly Young People, And There Are A Lot Of More Men Than Before, But Always Young, I Don't Get Older Men. As I'm Getting Older, My Audience Gets Younger!

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

Heart Is What Drives Us And Determines Our Fate.

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

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.

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

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.

The Slave Who Dances Is Free ... While He Is Dancing.

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 Try To Let Go Of The Intellect And Just Tell The Story. I Only Read The Page I Have In Front Of Me On The Screen. Then When The Whole Story Is Told, I Print It, Wait A Week And Read It.

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

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.

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.

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

Barrabas Came To Us By The Sea.

But I Don't Want More Things Than I Need, Either.

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.

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

The First Two, Three, Four Weeks Are Wasted. I Just Show Up In Front Of The Computer. 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.

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.

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.

What Happens In The World Affects Me. Sometimes, That's Part Of The Writing.

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 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.

Until A Few Months Ago We Had A Code Of Honor, And Even The Worst Ruffians Behaved With Decency. You Could Leave Your Gold In A Tent With No Guard And No One Would Touch It, But Now All That Has Changed. The Law Of The Jungle Rules, The Only Ideology Is Greed. Don't Let Yourself Be Parted From Your Weapons, And Always Travel In Pairs Or Groups, Because This Is A Land Of Thieves.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

People Are Afraid Of Falling In Love Because They Don't Want To Suffer.

Falling In Love

If This World Is Going To Be A Better Place For Our Grandchildren And Great-grandchildren, It Will Be Women Who Make It So.

My Books Are Based On Emotions, Feelings, Relationships. In These Areas Women Are Experts, So It's Not Strange That The Main Characters Of My Novels Are Females.

Emotions Feelings

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.

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.

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.

I've Been A Story-teller All My Life But I Realized It Only Recently.

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.

My Mum Said That As You Age You Have To Smell Good And Be Clean And Don't Hate Anybody Because That Makes You Older. Um I Don't Agree. I Think That Of Course You Have To Smell Good And Be Clean But There's Much More That You Have To Do. Don't Complain, Exercise, Be Be Strong, Um Work, Be Creative, Be Related To The World, Have Causes, Fight For Them Passionately. I Think All Those Things Are Important. I I'm Not Going To Give Up And Just Smell Good.

Write To Register History, And Name Each Thing. Write What Should Not Be Forgotten.

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.

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

I Need To Tell A Story. It's An Obsession. Each Story Is A Seed Inside Of Me That Starts To Grow And Grow, Like A Tumor, And I Have To Deal With It Sooner Or Later.

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.

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.

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

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

I Don't Want To Die In Pain Or In An Undignified Way, I Don't Want Any Of The People I Love To Die In, Die Painfully. But I'm Aware Of The Fact That They May Die Before I Do And I Have To Part With Them And Take The Loss. The Hardest Thing Of Love Is To Let Go. But I Think I Can Get Let Go Of Almost Anybody.

Society Decides When We Get Old. But The Spirit Never Ages.

When Love Exists, Nothing Else Matters, Not Life’s Predicaments, Not The Fury Of The Years, Not A Physical Winding Down Or Scarcity Of Opportunity.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Some People Connect With A Story And May Find Between The Lines Something That Might Be Useful To Him Or Her, But That's Not The Intention Of The Author, I Think. At Least Not Mine.

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 Read Thrillers, Romance Or Mystery, And I Don't Read Self-help Books Because I Don't Believe In Shortcuts And Loopholes.

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.

I Have More Freedom When I Write Fiction, But My Memoirs Have Had A Much Stronger Impact On My Readers. Somehow The 'message,' Even If I Am Not Even Aware That There Is One, Is Conveyed Better In This Form.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The Names Of Persons And Living Creatures Demand Respect, Because When We Speak To Them We Touch Their Heart And Become A Part Of Thier Life Force.

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.

I Have Seen These Persons Speak Unthinkingly, Not Realizing That To Speak Is Also To Be. Word And Gesture Are Man's Thought. We Should Not Speak Without Reason.

You Are The Storyteller Of Your Own Life, And You Can Create Your Own Legend, Or Not.

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.

Be Careful What You Ask Of Heaven; It Might Be Granted.

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?

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.

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.

Remember That All The Others Are More Afraid Than You

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

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

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.

The Hardest Thing Of Love Is To Let Go.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

How Can One Not Speak About War, Poverty, And Inequality When People Who Suffer From These Afflictions Don't Have A Voice To Speak?

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

Land Is Something One Should Never Sell. It Is The Only Thing Left When All Else Is Gone

You Have The Health You Deserve.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

We Don't Have An Explanation For Everything That Happens. We Don't Control Almost Anything. And If We Are Not Open To That Mystery, Life Becomes So Small.

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

The Library Is Inhabited By Spirits That Come Out Of The Pages At Night.

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.

Everyone Is Born With Some Special Talent.

A Memoir Forces Me To Stop And Remember Carefully. It Is An Exercise In Truth. In A Memoir, I Look At Myself, My Life, And The People I Love The Most In The Mirror Of The Blank Screen. In A Memoir, Feelings Are More Important Than Facts, And To Write Honestly, I Have To Confront My Demons.

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

The Last Time I Was In Chile, I Was Hypnotized By A Friend Who Is Studying To Be A Curandero, A Healer, Who Led Me Back Through Several Incarnations. It Wasn't Easy To Return To The Present, However, Since My Friend Hadn't Reached That Part Of The Course, But The Experiment Was Well Worth The Effort Because I Discovered That In Former Lives I Was Not Genghis Khan, As My Mother Believes.

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.

His Calls For Justice Were Lost At The Mercy Of The Wind And Human Indifference.

Everyone In His Place And A Place For Everyone.

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

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

A Novel Is Achieved With Hard Work, The Short Story With Inspiration.

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.

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.

When You Tell A Story In The Kitchen To A Friend, It's Full Of Mistakes And Repetitions. It's Good To Avoid That In Literature, But Still, A Story Should Feel Like A Conversation. It's Not A Lecture.

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

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Werner Heisenberg

Melissa Gilbert

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