Quotes By Isabel Allende

I have more freedom when I write fiction, but my memoirs have had a much stronger impact on my readers. Somehow the 'message,' even if I am not even aware that there is one, is conveyed better in this form.

I 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.

I tend to see the similarities in people and not the differences.

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.

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'm living in California but I have a place that is mine in Chile and I belong there. I am no longer an exile.

Writing is my job. I don't think of it as art.

I was a lousy journalist. I could never be objective. Sometimes I invented the whole story.

Although women do two-thirds of the world's labor, they own less than one percent of the world's assets.

I don't want an uneventful and safe life, I prefer an adventurous one.

What I fear most is power with impunity. I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse.

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.

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!

The first lie of fiction is that the author gives some order to the chaos of life: chronological order, or whatever order the author chooses.

Today's girls are tomorrow's women - and leaders.

Feminism is dated? Yes, for privileged women like my daughter and all of us here today, but not for most of our sisters in the rest of the world who are still forced into premature marriage, prostitution, forced labor - they have children that they don't want or they cannot feed.

I've been a story-teller all my life but I realized it only recently.

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.

Heart is what drives us and determines our fate.

My writing comes not from the happy moments, but from struggle and grief.

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.

My life is about ups and downs, great joys and great losses.

I'm interested in people who have to overcome obstacles, people who are not sheltered by the umbrella of the establishment, marginals.

I'm aware of the mystery around us, so I write about coincidences, premonitions, emotions, dreams, the power of nature, magic.

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.

If I didn't write my soul would dry up and die.

We want a world where life is preserved, and the quality of life is enriched for everybody, not only for the privileged.

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.

I can promise you that women working together - linked, informed and educated - can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.

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.