Latest Isabel Allende Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Isabel Allende

  Thinking, People, Stories

  "The Lenny Interview: Isabel Allende". Interview with Collier Meyerson, www.lennyletter.com. January 15, 2016.

• 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.

  Isabel Allende

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Interview with Collier Meyerson, www.lennyletter.com. January 15, 2016.

• 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.

  Isabel Allende

  Thinking, Giving, Trying

  "The Lenny Interview: Isabel Allende". Interview with Collier Meyerson, www.lennyletter.com. January 15, 2016.

• 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.

  Isabel Allende

  Book, Shadow, Lines

  "The Lenny Interview: Isabel Allende". Interview with Collier Meyerson, www.lennyletter.com. January 15, 2016.

• 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.

  Isabel Allende

  Mother, Retirement, New York

  "The Lenny Interview: Isabel Allende". Interview with Collier Meyerson, www.lennyletter.com. January 15, 2016.

• Friendship is all about trust and sharing. Passionate and romantic love is all about sex and emotions. You have to try to combine those, I think. The great marriages, the great couples I know, have both.

  Isabel Allende

  Sex, Couple, Romantic Love

  "The Lenny Interview: Isabel Allende". Interview with Collier Meyerson, www.lennyletter.com. January 15, 2016.

• People come from internally, from other places in the United States, but also displaced people from other parts of the world. They come here. If you walk in the streets of San Francisco, you hear all the languages. You smell all the foods. You listen to the music from everywhere. There's great diversity.

  Isabel Allende

  Smell, San Francisco, People

  Interview with Collier Meyerson, www.lennyletter.com. January 15, 2016.

• You would give your life for your little baby. It's not the same when you are in a sexual relationship unless you feel that you are loved as you love.

  Isabel Allende

  Baby, Giving, Littles

  "The Lenny Interview: Isabel Allende". Interview with Collier Meyerson, www.lennyletter.com. January 15, 2016.

• I love my dog unconditionally, but never the man I'm sleeping with.

  Isabel Allende

  Dog, Sleep, Men

  "The Lenny Interview: Isabel Allende". Interview with Collier Meyerson, www.lennyletter.com. January 15, 2016.

• It's such an intimate and profound relationship that it cannot be unconditional. I can only compare the intimacy of sex with the intimacy of the mother with a newborn baby. But with a newborn baby, it is unconditional.

  Isabel Allende

  Mother, Baby, Sex

  "The Lenny Interview: Isabel Allende". Interview with Collier Meyerson, www.lennyletter.com. January 15, 2016.

• 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.

  Isabel Allende

  People, Age, United States

  "The Lenny Interview: Isabel Allende". Interview with Collier Meyerson, www.lennyletter.com. January 15, 2016.

• Most people feel younger than their age, but the culture values youth, success, beauty, productivity. There is no space in this culture for older people.

  Isabel Allende

  Space, People, Age

  "The Lenny Interview: Isabel Allende". Interview with Collier Meyerson, www.lennyletter.com. January 15, 2016.

• Before I start writing, before I have an idea of where and when the story happens, I research it thoroughly.

  Isabel Allende

  Writing, Ideas, Stories

  "The Lenny Interview: Isabel Allende". Interview with Collier Meyerson, www.lennyletter.com. January 15, 2016.

• I have a very acute sense of place and time, so all of my stories are rooted in a place and a time.

  Isabel Allende

  Stories, Place And Time, Sense Of Place

  "The Lenny Interview: Isabel Allende". Interview with Collier Meyerson, www.lennyletter.com. January 15, 2016.

• My female protagonist will not be this promiscuous, beautiful, dark-haired, thin lady. It will be a plump, blond, healer and so forth.

  Isabel Allende

  Beautiful, Dark, Female

  "The Mystery Of Isabel Allende: Author Explores New Genre". "All Things Considered" with Kelly McEvers, nwpr.org. January 25, 2014.

• 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.

  Isabel Allende

  Thinking, Rights, Forever

  "The Mystery Of Isabel Allende: Author Explores New Genre". "All Things Considered" with Kelly McEvers, nwpr.org. January 25, 2014.

• I'm an expert. I can kill anybody and not be caught.

  Isabel Allende

  Experts, Caught, I Can

  "The Mystery Of Isabel Allende: Author Explores New Genre". "All Things Considered" with Kelly McEvers, nwpr.org. January 25, 2014.

• In 2011, I announced that I was going to retire, and my agent panicked. So she says: No, no, no. You have to write a book with your husband.

  Isabel Allende

  Husband, Book, Writing

  "The Mystery Of Isabel Allende: Author Explores New Genre". "All Things Considered" with Kelly McEvers, nwpr.org. January 25, 2014.

• I carry around a little stool to stand on when people want a picture with their cellular phones.

  Isabel Allende

  Phones, People, Want

  "The Mystery Of Isabel Allende: Author Explores New Genre". "All Things Considered" with Kelly McEvers, nwpr.org. January 25, 2014.

• 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.

  Isabel Allende

  Eye, Blue, Years

  "The Mystery Of Isabel Allende: Author Explores New Genre". "All Things Considered" with Kelly McEvers, nwpr.org. January 25, 2014.

• I'm surrounded by young people. I'm always now the oldest and the shortest person in the room.

  Isabel Allende

  People, Rooms, Young

• 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.

  Isabel Allende

  Book, Reading, Writing

  "The Mystery Of Isabel Allende: Author Explores New Genre". "All Things Considered" with Kelly McEvers, nwpr.org. January 25, 2014.

• I went to a mystery writers conference ... and I learned a lot not only from the faculty - and in the faculty we had forensic doctors, detectives, policemen, experts in guns, etc. - but from the questions of the students.

  Isabel Allende

  Gun, Doctors, Experts

  "The Mystery Of Isabel Allende: Author Explores New Genre". "All Things Considered" with Kelly McEvers, nwpr.org. January 25, 2014.

• When I fall in love I'm obsessed.

  Isabel Allende

  Falling In Love, Fall, Obsessed

  "Author Isabel Allende". "Tell Tavis" with Tavis Smiley, www.pbs.org. May 12, 2010.

• 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.

  Isabel Allende

  Dog, Husband, Writing

  "Author Isabel Allende". "Tell Tavis" with Tavis Smiley, www.pbs.org. May 12, 2010.