Best Paula Quotes by Isabel Allende

"Genteel poverty is the worst of all because it must be concealed."

"Life was strife and hard work, and an honorable man should not pass through this world without helping his neighbor."

"Every morning he took a cold shower, a custom no one in the family imitated, and one that when he resembled nothing more than a geriatric beetle he fulfilled, old but undaunted, seated in a chair beneath the icy blast."

"Writing is a long process of introspection; it is a voyage toward the darkest caverns of consciousness, a long, slow meditation."

"My life is created as I narrate, and my memory grows stronger with writing; what I do not put in words on a page will be erased by time."

"It isn’t possible to go back in time. I must not keep looking back, yet I can’t stop doing it, it’s an obsession."

"My memory is like a Mexican mural in which all times are simultaneous: the ships of the Conquistadors in one corner and an Inquisitor torturing Indians in another, galloping Liberators with blood-soaked flags and the Aztecs’ Plumed Serpent facing a crucified Christ, all encircled by the billowing smokestacks of the industrial age."

"My past has little meaning; I can see no order to it, no clarity, purpose, or path, only a blind journey guided by instinct and detours caused by events beyond my control."

"We all need a grandmother. Not only has she played that role to perfection—despite the inconvenience of her death—but she also inspired the character I love most of all those in my books: Clara... clearest, clairvoyant Clara, of The House of the Spirits."

"Tata had all the vitality of a practical man: he was healthy, enterprising, and loved sports. She was alien to this earth, ethereal and unreachable."

"He tried a thousand times to capture the airy spirit that flashed past him like a comet, leaving behind an enduring trail of astral dust, but always ended with the feeling she had escaped him."

"Newly widowed, however, he felt betrayed. He accused Memé of having abandoned him halfway along the road. His mourning was dark as a crow’s wing; he painted the furniture black and, to avoid further suffering, tried to eliminate affection from his existence—never totally succeeding."

"Once bowed by years and sorrow, he could no longer contain those tears; he used to brush them away with his fists, infuriated by his own weakness."

"He lived in a large room on the first floor of the house, where the hours were marked by the funereal striking of a grandfather’s clock."

"We spend the day in the corridor of lost steps, next to the door to the intensive care unit, just the two of us, until evening, when Ernesto comes from work and your friends and the nuns from your school drop by to visit."

"My childhood was a time of unvoiced fears: terror of Margara, who detested me; fear that my father would come back to claim us, or that my mother would die or get married; fear of the devil, of my uncles’ games of Ruffin, or of the things bad men can do to little girls."

"I suppose that it is from that feeling of loneliness the questions arise that lead one to write, and that books are conceived in the search for answers."

"I drew characters on bristol board, cut them out, and propped them up with toothpicks; those were my first ventures in theater."

"I lived every story as if it were my own life; I was each of those characters, especially the villains, who were much more attractive to me than the virtuous heroes."

"That day, for the first time ever, I realized that life can be generous."

"Abundance is always within reach, if only one knows how to find it."

"Love roars down on the women of our family like a gale-force wind."

"The woman left trapped in the silo is also you, a prisoner of the restrictions of adult life."

"The female condition is a disgrace, Isabel, it’s like having rocks tied to your ankles so you can’t fly."

"Every night dreams wait for me crouched beneath the bed with their bag of horrific visions—but also with an ever-renewed harvest of fleeting, happy images."

"In terms of the cosmos and the long course of history, we are insignificant; after we die nothing will change, as if we had never existed."

"Every day several million persons die and even more are born, but, for me, you alone were born, only you can die."

"The light was so intense that colors paled in the incandescent whiteness of the morning."

"The taste and smell are not like anything else; at first the iodine was repellent, but then the succulent, palpitating meat filled my mouth with distinct and inseparable savors."

"In the end, I left him to return to my family."

"I haven't forgotten, but it is true that I am more distant; sorrow is a solitary road."

"The future does not exist, we can only be sure of the past—from which we draw experience and knowledge—and the present—a brief spark that at the instant it is born becomes yesterday."

"He was indefatigable in his care for her, at the same time he scolds her, 'Come on now, for Chrissakes, swallow the soup or I’ll empty it over your head. Jesus God, this woman is a pain in the ass.'"

"Never before have we had so much time together; never, except when my children were babies, have I shared such a long and profound intimacy."

"I didn’t know how comfortable it is to share a space with another woman."

"The map of his destiny has already been drawn."

"During the countless hours we share in the hospital, he recounts, in the calmest of voices, incredible adventures."

"We spent entire afternoons, openmouthed, eyes glazed, awaiting some revelation that would change the course of their lives, but nothing happened."

"If they would agree to revise the standards, they could end machismo in one generation."

"The furniture in our house tended to disappear and be replaced by questionable antiques from the Persian Market."

"I burned with restlessness, I saw injustices everywhere, I intended to transform the world, and I embraced so many different causes that I myself lost count."

"For no reason at all, I began walking toward the mouth of the river, the center of that small fishing village where it was still too early for any activity."

"I heard voices, and saw people gathered near one of the farthest shacks, where the river empties into the sea."

"Something exploded in my chest, and my mouth was filled with the taste of bitter grapefruit; I bent over double, rocked by violent spasms."

"At dusk, we climbed the hill to the clapboard shack decorated with paper garlands, a Chilean flag, and humble bunches of flowers from gardens along the coast."

"I have not given up hope; I believe that in spite of the ominous prognosis you will come back to us."

"We will take care of her, many families do it, we aren’t the only ones. Looking after Paula and loving her will give us new purpose, we’ll learn a different form of happiness."

"This immobility is a strange experience. The days are measured grain by grain in an hourglass of patient sand, so slow the calendar does not record them."

"Time moves so slowly. Or perhaps it doesn’t move at all and it is we who pass through it."

"My thoughts swirl in inexhaustible eddies; you, on the other hand, are fixed in a static present, totally aloof from loss of the past or presages of the future."

"With a brutal expenditure of energy, I have been rowing upstream all my life. I am tired, I want to turn around, drop the oars, and let the current carry me gently toward the sea."

"Euphoric, we rejoined Michael and the children outside, unable to absorb the tremendous honor of having got the job on our first try."

"Keep your head up, lower your shoulders, and smile, woman!, stop staring at the floor, and as you walk, cross one leg slightly in front of the other."

"I looked at myself in the mirror and realized the audience would welcome me with a hail of tomatoes."

"The honorable ambassador was forced to explain to the tabloid press that the cousin of President Allende had not danced naked in a pornographic extravaganza."

"He looked me up and down and immediately took my word for it."

"There is nothing that can’t be cured with a little music and a drop of rum."

"I love all things, not only the grand but the infinitely small: thimble, spurs, plates, flower vases."

"You will hear it still. I shall be with you always."

"Our opponents have the power, they can crush us, but social progress will not be stopped with crime or with force."

"Viva Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!"

"You don’t know what you’re saying! You never saw Paula when she was healthy, you don’t have the vaguest idea what she’s really like! She is brilliant, the most intelligent person in our family, always the first in everything she does. She has an indomitable spirit. Do you think she would give in? Never!"

"For nearly fifty years I have been a toreador taunting violence and pain with a red cape, secure in the protection of the good luck birthmark on my back—even though in my heart I suspected that one day I would feel the claws of misfortune raking my shoulder."

"The bay of San Francisco had never looked so beautiful; a thousand brightly colored sails were unfurled to celebrate the beginning of spring, people in shorts were jogging across the Golden Gate Bridge, and the mountains were vitally green because at last it had rained, after six years of drought."

"She had been tossing overboard the last vestiges of vanity and had no taste for adornment, for anything unnecessary or superfluous; in her clear view, there was space and patience only for the essentials."

"Once Paula wrote me that when you came into her life everything changed, she felt complete. And she told me that sometimes when you were with other people, half dazed by the noise of several conversations, you had only to look at each other to know how much you were in love."

"In the darkest moments, when all doors close to us and we feel trapped with no way out, there is always some unexpected opening toward escape."

"I, like thousands of other Chileans, have often asked myself whether I did the right thing in leaving my country during the dictatorship, whether I had the right to uproot my children and drag my husband to an uncertain future in a strange country."

"Natural selection has not caused a flowering of intelligence or evolution of the spirit, at the first opportunity, we destroy one another like rats trapped in a too-small box."

"During moments of greatest danger I remembered the advice Tío Ramón gave me the night of my first party: Remember that all the others are more afraid than you."

"Those white peaks thrusting through winter clouds were the last image I had of my country. 'I’ll be back, I’ll be back,' I repeated like a prayer."

"There comes a moment when the journey begun cannot be halted; we roll toward a frontier, pass through a mysterious door, and wake on the other side in a different life: the child enters the world, and the mother a different state of consciousness, neither of the two will ever be the same."

"Children, like books, are voyages into one’s inner self, during which body, mind, and soul shift course and turn toward the very center of existence."

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

"I had watched how they cared for her and how they used the physiotherapy equipment. Within three days, I obtained everything we needed, including a hospital bed with a lift, and hired four women from Central America to help me with day and night shifts."

"These pages are an irreversible voyage through a long tunnel; I can’t see an exit but I know there must be one. I can’t go back, only continue to go forward, step by step, to the end."

"In those times of loneliness and impotence, I more than ever needed some contact with nature—the peace of a forest, the silence of a mountain, the whisper of the sea—but women were not expected to go alone to the movies, much less somewhere in open country where anything could happen."

"If he suspected anything, he may have attributed it to an existential crisis, thinking it would go away, like the twenty-four-hour flu."

"Granny began to die the day she was separated from her two grandchildren; the agony lasted three long years."

"And ever since, anytime I smell jasmine, Granny appears."

"The young have to follow their mother's destiny."

"Don't say anything bad about me to Paula and Nicolás."

"I am fifty years old, I have entered the last half of my life but I feel as strong as when I was twenty."

"We bought it several years ago, when Willie and I realized that our love at first sight was not giving any signs of diminishing."

"Houses need births and deaths to become homes."

"I decided to write him one last time, to tell him he could go in peace because I would never forget him."

"The idea of becoming an anonymous nun came to me much later."

"Life is a miracle, and for her, it ended abruptly, without time to say goodbye or settle accounts."

"Every stage of the road is different, and maybe the one having to do with literature is behind me."

"The idea of leaving the body is fascinating. I do not want to go on living and die inside."

"Perhaps old age is a new beginning, maybe we can return to the magic time of infancy."

"I have very little to lose now, nothing to defend; could this be freedom at last?"

"They can change into birds and see the world from above, or worms to see it from within."

"My work as a journalist, my involvement in theater and television, kept me busy; I did not again think in terms of destiny until the military coup brought me to a brutal confrontation with reality."

"I had risked everything once, had lost, and fate had given me a second chance, I should be grateful for my good fortune."

"I was choking in my role as a sensible bourgeois woman, consumed by the desires of my youth."

"My body functioned like an automaton, while my mind was lost in that world being born word by word."

"To please her, though, I agreed to the change and, after much searching, found a French patronymic with one fewer letter that would fit easily into the same space: I could paint over 'Bilbaire' with the correction fluid and type in 'Satigny,' a task that took several days, revising page by page."

"It is impossible to describe my feelings at that moment; all I can say is that I have never experienced it with any of my other books, or their translations into languages I thought were dead, or adaptations to film or stage: that copy of The House of the Spirits, with its rose-colored border and image of a woman with green hair, touched my deepest emotions."

"I don’t know how or why I write; my books are not born in my mind, they gestate in my womb and are capricious creatures with their own lives, always ready to subvert me."