Quotes from Isabel Allende

She embellished the facts, because she was aware that life is

Since 1973, the year of the military coup that changed so many things, situating has become a little more complex because in the first three minutes of conversation you also have to guess whether the person you're speaking to was for or against the dictatorship.

I must admit that I didn't choose journalism, I was caught off guard; the profession simply sank its claws into me. It was love at first sight, a sudden passion that has determined a large part of my life.

The few exiles who returned to the hospital were received with much less fanfare, because it was unwise to attract attention. This was the tacit slogan throughout the country: don't provoke the military, so as to pretend the recent past was buried and in the process of being forgotten.

The General was right. No one dies of hunger here - you reach out your hand and pluck a mango. That's why there is no progress. Cold countries have more advanced civilizations because the climate forces people to work.

The young soldier was part of the "Baby Bottle Conscription," the boys called up when there were no more men, young or old, to fight the war.

The elderly are the most entertaining people in the world, she eventually told Irina. They have lived a lot, say whatever they like, and couldn't care less about other people's opinion.

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.

Chile with the purpose of finding her lover and becoming his slave forever, believing that was the way to extinguish her thirst to submit and her hidden wish for possession, but now she doubted that she could give up those new wings beginning to sprout on her shoulders.

it is the most Catholic country in the world—more Catholic than Ireland, and certainly much more so than the Vatican.

I have not succeeded in completely shaking free of religion, and when I'm faced with any difficulty, the first thing that occurs to me is to pray, just in case, which is what all Chileans do, even atheists . . . forgive me, agnostics.

Nothing surprises me, I can anticipate others' reactions, I understand what gestures mean, silences, formulas of courtesy, ambiguous responses. Only there do I feel comfortable socially—despite the fact I rarely behave as I'm expected to—because there I know how to behave and my good manners rarely fail me.