Isabel Allende Art Quotations

Women age more in company because they have more relationships. Men have buddies. They have acquaintances, they have comrades. Friends as women have, the friends that of the soul that you share everything, that you witness each other's lives, that you talk their, your, heart out, that you cry with, that you ask money when you need, that.

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

There is room in the human heart for all the divinities.

...a fixation is very stubborn: it burrows into the brain and breaks the heart. There are many fixations, but love is the worst.

The names of persons and living creatures demand respect, because when we speak to them we touch their heart and become a part of thier life force.

Now of course we have Black historians, but they're usually men. We get the perspective always, the slanted perspective, of what has happened. The battles, the things achieved, the laws, but where are the people, the families? What happens inside the houses, inside the minds and the hearts? That's what I'm interested in.

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.

In the books I have written, I have created in my mind a universe. My kids say I have a village in my head and I live in that village, and it's true. When I start writing a book, characters from previous books reappear. All my emotions, my mind, my heart, my dreams, everything becomes connected with a new book, and nothing else really matters.

My mother is a great artist, but she always treated her paintings like minor postcards. Had she pursued it, she would have been a great artist. Instead, she looked down on her art.

I have been a foreigner all my life, first as a daughter of diplomats, then as a political refugee and now as an immigrant in the U.S. I have had to leave everything behind and start anew several times, and I have lost most of my extended family.

When I write fiction, I never try to deliver a message; I just want to tell a story. But I admit that I want the story to be memorable and the characters to touch the reader's heart.