Isabel Allende Quotes

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 have learned many things in the 30 years that I have been writing.

I have been a woman for 46 years and I only recently realized I can't change it and I like it.

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 am an American citizen and it is my home now. I like the U.S.A., which is not a place too many people have liked since Bush. The U.S. has a young population, and everything can change within a year.

Heart is what drives us and determines our fate.

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.

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

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.

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

Empowering women means trusting them.

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

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.

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

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

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

If this world is going to be a better place for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, it will be women who make it so.

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. 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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