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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.

-Isabel Allende

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The Biggest Straitjacket Is

Isabel Allende

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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.

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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 Need To Remember To Overcome.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Falling In Love

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

You Have The Health You Deserve.

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.

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.

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.

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 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'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.

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

Nothing's As Dangerous As Power With Impunity.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Everyone In His Place And A Place For Everyone.

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

Sex Is The Instrument And Love The Music.

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 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.

How Accommodating Love Is; It Forgives Everything.

Empowering Women Means Trusting Them.

Empowering Women

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.

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.

Writing Is A Calling, Not A Choice.

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'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?

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.

Writing Is A Constant Exercise In Longing.

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.

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

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 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.

True Friendship Resists Time, Distance And Silence.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

What Is Truer Than Truth? Answer: The Story.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Hardest Thing Of Love Is To Let Go.

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.

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

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!

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

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

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

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

...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.

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

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.

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

We Only Have What We Give.

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

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

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

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

I Like Hillary Clinton A Lot. I Know Her.

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

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.

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.

Heart Is What Drives Us And Determines Our Fate.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Cooking Can Be Like Foreplay.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

Words Are Not That Important When You Recognize Intentions.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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!

You Can Tell The Deepest Truths With The Lies Of Fiction

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Write What Should Not Be Forgotten.

Barrabas Came To Us By The Sea.

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

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.

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.

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.

With Women The Best Aphrodisiac Is Words.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 . . .

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.

Someone Has Said That Conversation Is Sex For The Soul.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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