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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.

-Isabel Allende

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January 8 Has Been

Isabel Allende

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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.

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

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.

What Is Truer Than Truth? Answer: The Story.

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

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.

Everyone Is Born With Some Special Talent.

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

Falling In Love

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.

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.

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.

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.

Someone Has Said That Conversation Is Sex For The Soul.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

When I Fall In Love I'm Obsessed.

Falling In Love

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.

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 Need To Remember To Overcome.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

He Was Not Oppressed By A Crowd Because In The Midst Of All The Hullabaloo He Always Found A Quiet Place For His Soul.

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

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.

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.

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.

At My Age, People Prefer To Stay In A Relationship That Is Not Working. I Do Not Understand That. I Think It Takes A Lot Of Courage To Separate. But It Takes More Energy To Stay In Something That Is Not Working.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I'm Not Above Anybody. I'm, I'm Not Better Than Anybody. I Am Made Of The Same Material That Everybody Else Is And If Somebody Can Be A Saint, So Can I And If Somebody Can Be A Torturer, So Can I.

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

When I Write Fiction, I Never Try To Deliver A Message; I Just Want To Tell A Story. But I Admit That I Want The Story To Be Memorable And The Characters To Touch The Reader's Heart.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Peace Requires Everyone To Be In The Circle - Wholeness, Inclusion.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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 . . .

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.

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

Empowering Women Means Trusting Them.

Empowering Women

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 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."

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.

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 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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

We Only Appreciate What We Have When We Lose It.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Falling In Love

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

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.

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.

Writing Is A Constant Exercise In Longing.

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.

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

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.

Love Is Music, And Sex Is Only The Instrument.

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

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

Remember That All The Others Are More Afraid Than You

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.

...memory Is Fragile And The Space Of A Single Life Is Brief, Passing So Quickly That We Never Get A Chance To See The Relationship Between Events; We Cannot Gauge The Consequences Of Our Acts, And We Believe In The Fiction Of Past, Present, And Future, But It May Also Be True That Everything Happens Simultaneously.

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

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.

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.

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'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.

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.

You Have The Health You Deserve.

In Times Of Conflict, War, Poverty Or Religious Fundamentalism, Women And Children Are The First And Most Numerous Victims. Women Need All Their Courage Today.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I Think That My Life Changed At 50. Many Things Happened. Menopause, The End Of Youth And My Daughter Died That Year After Being A Whole Year In A Coma. So I Think That I Changed And I Became An Elder At 50.

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.

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.

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

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.

You Can Tell The Deepest Truths With The Lies Of Fiction

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Aphrodite Is About Lust And Gluttony - The Only Two Sins Worth Committing, In My Opinion.

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.

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

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.

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

With Women The Best Aphrodisiac Is Words.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Everyone In His Place And A Place For Everyone.

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.

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.

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!

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.

True Friendship Resists Time, Distance And Silence.

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 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.

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.

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

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

Barrabas Came To Us By Sea, The Child Clara Wrote In Her Delicate Calligraphy.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

Now Of Course We Have Black Historians, But They're Usually Men. We Get The Perspective Always, The Slanted Perspective, Of What Has Happened. The Battles, The Things Achieved, The Laws, But Where Are The People, The Families? What Happens Inside The Houses, Inside The Minds And The Hearts? That's What I'm Interested In.

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

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?

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

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

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.

I Like Hillary Clinton A Lot. I Know Her.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Write What Should Not Be Forgotten.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nothing's As Dangerous As Power With Impunity.

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.

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.

Words Are Not That Important When You Recognize Intentions.

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.

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