Quotes By Isabel Allende

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!

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.

Empowering women means trusting them.

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.

Roots are not in landscape or a country, or a people, they are inside you.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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