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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.

-Isabel Allende

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I Began To Wonder

Isabel Allende

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

We Only Appreciate What We Have When We Lose It.

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

Write What Should Not Be Forgotten.

Everyone Has A Story, The Air Is Full Of Stories. The Creative Process Is Mysterious, I Don't Know Why It Is That Suddenly A Theme Will Take Hold Of Me And Refuse To Leave Me In Peace Until I Investigate It And Write It.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

It Is Common Knowledge That No Man That Women Flock To Boasts Of His Conquests. Those Who Do, Lie.

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.

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

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 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!

Barrabas Came To Us By The Sea.

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.

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

Women Have Always Been Courageous... They Are Always Fearless When Protecting Their Children And In The Last Century They Have Been Fearless In The Fight For Their Rights.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Hardest Thing Of Love Is To Let Go.

Write With Honesty And Don't Worry About The Feelings Of Others, Because No Matter What You Say, They'll Hate You Anyway.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 Think I Was A Feminist Before The Word Was Invented.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

We All Have An Unsuspected Reserve Of Strength Inside That Emerges When Life Puts Us To The Test.

I'm Aware Of The Mystery Around Us, So I Write About Coincidences, Premonitions, Emotions, Dreams, The Power Of Nature, Magic.

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.

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

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.

How Accommodating Love Is; It Forgives Everything.

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

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

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.

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.

I Can Promise You That Women Working Together - Linked, Informed And Educated - Can Bring Peace And Prosperity To This Forsaken Planet.

Working Together

Empowering Women Means Trusting Them.

Empowering Women

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Collecting Things

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.

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

There Is No Death, Daughter. People Die Only When We Forget Them,' My Mother Explained Shortly Before She Left Me. 'if You Can Remember Me, I Will Be With You Always.

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

Love Is Music, And Sex Is Only The Instrument.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

You Have The Health You Deserve.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Sex Is The Instrument And Love The Music.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Give, Give, Give-what Is The Point Of Having Experience, Knowledge Or Talent If I Don't Give It Away?

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

Cooking Can Be Like Foreplay.

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.

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

You Can Tell The Deepest Truths With The Lies Of Fiction

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

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.

What Is Truer Than Truth? Answer: The Story.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

He Realized...that The Loudest Are The Least Sincere, That Arrogance Is A Quality Of The Ignorant, And That Flatterers Tend To Be Vicious.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

Fiction Happens In The Womb. It Doesn't Get Processed In The Mind Until You Do The Editing.

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

Falling In Love

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 Such A Sullen, Angry, Sad Kid. I'm Sure There Are Writers Who Have Had Happy Childhoods, But What Are You Going To Write About? No Ghosts, No Fear. I'm Very Happy That I Had An Unhappy And Uncomfortable Childhood.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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.

Words Are Not That Important When You Recognize Intentions.

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.

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.

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

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.

Women Age More In Company Because They Have More Relationships. Men Have Buddies. They Have Acquaintances, They Have Comrades. Friends As Women Have, The Friends That Of The Soul That You Share Everything, That You Witness Each Other's Lives, That You Talk Their, Your, Heart Out, That You Cry With, That You Ask Money When You Need, That.

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

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.

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

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.

With Women The Best Aphrodisiac Is Words.

The Source Of My Difficulties Has Always Been The Same: An Inability To Accept What To Others Seems Natural, And An Irresistible Tendency To Voice Opinions No One Wants To Hear . . .

Sometimes Journalists Ask Me, "what's The Message?" There Is No Message. I Think That Fiction Should Not Be Trying To Give Messages. Just Tell A Story.

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

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

When I Started Working In A Feminist Feminine Magazine All My Life Was About Rebelling Against Male Authority, Which Is Authority In General Is Male, So It Was Rebelling Against Everything. Everything That Was Around Me Made Me Angry.

We Only Have What We Give.

She Never Imagined A Scenario In Which Her Love Was Not Returned With The Same Depth Of Feeling, For To Her It Was Impossible To Believe That A Love Of Such Magnitude Could Have Stunned Only Her. The Most Elementary Logic And Justice Indicated That Somewhere In The City He Was Suffering The Same Delicious Torment.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Writing Is A Constant Exercise In Longing.

The Pain Of Losing My Child Was A Cleansing Experience. I Had To Throw Overboard All Excess Baggage And Keep Only What Is Essential.

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

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

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

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.

Remember That All The Others Are More Afraid Than You

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

Falling In Love

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."

True Friendship Resists Time, Distance And Silence.

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.

I'm Such A Control Freak. I Want To Control Even My Own Death. Decide When I Will Die And How.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

How Many Times Have I Told You Not To Believe Everything You Hear? Seek Truth For Yourself.

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