Quotes from Isabel Allende

After a few months without writing, months I've lived turned outward... I fear going deaf, not being able to hear the silence.

We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test.

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.

Today the nanas have become so emancipated that the lords of their domains prefer to hire illegal immigrants from Peru, whom they can mistreat as badly as they used to their Chilean servant girls.

I think you'll see that my life story is worthy of a novel, because of my sins more than my virtues.

I like fabrics, colors, makeup, and the routine of putting myself together every morning, even though I spend most of my time locked away in the attic writing. "No one sees me, but I see myself," my mother would comment philosophically

All husbands are boring, John. No woman with an ounce of sense gets married to be entertained, she marries to be maintained.

I related my impressions of La Paz, its purple mountains, its hermetic Indians, and its air, so thin that your lungs are always on the verge of filling with foam and your mind with hallucinations.

Gringos invented two terms that are untranslatable into most languages: "snack" and "quickie," to refer to eating standing up and loving on the run . . . that, too, sometimes standing up.

My son, the Holy Church is on the right, but Jesus Christ was always on the left

On the day of the election everything went according to plan, in perfect order. The armed forces were there to uphold the democratic process, and all was peaceful on a spring day more sprightly and sunny than usual.

Life was beautiful, and America was truly "the land of the free and the home of the brave," a land where someone like Gregory could become President; all you had to do was stay pure of heart, love God and your mother, be forever faithful to one girl, respect the law, defend the weak, and scorn money—because heroes never expected to be compensated.