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

It is a wonderful truth that things we want most in life-a sense of purpose, happiness and hope-are most easily attained by giving them to others.

Isabel Allende

purpose want giving

Every person is born with a talent, and happiness depends on discovering that talent in time.

Isabel Allende

discovering born talent

You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend, or not.

Isabel Allende

storyteller legends fame

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

Isabel Allende

working-together peace promise

Give, give, give - what is the point of having experience, knowledge or talent if I don't give it away? Of having stories if I don't tell them to others? Of having wealth if I don't share it? I don't intend to be cremated with any of it! It is in giving that I connect with others, with the world and with the divine.

Isabel Allende

learning giving knowledge

For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.

Isabel Allende

inspirational love life

There is no death, daughter. People die only when we forget them,' my mother explained shortly before she left me. 'If you can remember me, I will be with you always.

Isabel Allende

daughter mother loss

Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.

Isabel Allende

anxiety accepting fear

We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test.

Isabel Allende

reserves tests

Music is a wind that blows away the years, memories, and fear, that crouching animal I carry inside me.

Isabel Allende

blow animal memories

You only have what you give. It’s by spending yourself that you become rich.

Isabel Allende

spending rich giving

Heart is what drives us and determines our fate.

Isabel Allende

new-year success inspirational

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

romantic-love couple sex

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

Isabel Allende

roots country people

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.

Isabel Allende

motivation inspiration real

Every time I asked a question, that magnificent teacher, instead of giving the answer, showed me how to find it. She taught me to organise my thoughts, to do research, to read and listen, to seek alternatives, to resolve old problems with new solutions, to argue logically. Above all, she taught me not to believe anything blindly, to doubt, and to question even what seemed irrefutably true, such as man's superiority over woman, or one race or social class over another.

Isabel Allende

teacher men believe

A man does what he can; a woman does what a man cannot.

Isabel Allende

women doe men

Silence before being born, silence after death: life is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences.

Isabel Allende

silence noise two

And I am not one of those women who trips twice over the same stone.

Isabel Allende

loneliness stones

I love fiction because in fiction you go into the thoughts of people, the little people, the people who were defeated, the poor, the women, the children that are never in history books.

Isabel Allende

book children people