Isabel Allende Love Quotes

Accept the children the way we accept trees—with gratitude, because they are a blessing—but do not have expectations or desires. You don’t expect trees to change, you love them as they are.

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.

Perhaps we are in this world to search for love, find it and lose it, again and again. With each love, we are born anew, and with each love that ends we collect a new wound. I am covered with proud scars.

He had only to touch me to turn my tears into sighs and my anger to desire. How accomodating love is; it forgives everything.

Writing is like making love. Don't worry about the orgasm, just concentrate on the process.

If I write something, I fear it will happen, and if I love too much, I fear I will lose that person; nevertheless, I cannot stop writing or loving...

When love exists, nothing else matters, not life’s predicaments, not the fury of the years, not a physical winding down or scarcity of opportunity.

Esa noche creí que había perdido para siempre la capacidad de enamorarme, que nunca más podría reírme ni perseguir una ilusión. Pero nunca más es mucho tiempo.

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

Happiness is not exuberant or noisy, like pleasure or joy; it’s silent, tranquil, and gentle; it’s a feeling of satisfaction inside that begins with self-love.

She was one of those people who was born for the greatness of a single love, for exaggerated hatred, for apocalyptic vengance, and for the most sublime forms of heroism but she was unable to shape her fate to the dimensions of her amorous vocation, so it was lived out as something flat and gray trapped between her mother's sickroom walls, wretched tenements, and the tortured confessions with which this large, opulent, hot-blooded woman made for maternity, abundance, action, and ardor- was consuming herself.

You are my angel and my damnation; in your presence I reach divine ecstasy and in your absence I descent to hell.

Nothing can grow in the shade of secrets, she would say, love needs light and space to flourish.

How accommodating love is; it forgives everything.

Nothing strong can be built on a foundation of lies and omissions.

She never imagined a scenario in which her love was not returned with the same depth of feeling, for to her it was impossible to believe that a love of such magnitude could have stunned only her. The most elementary logic and justice indicated that somewhere in the city he was suffering the same delicious torment.

As my Popo used to say, life is a tapestry we weave day by day with threads of different colors, some heavy and dark, others thin and bright, all the threads having their uses. The stupid things I did are already in the tapestry, indelible, but I’m not going to be weighed down by them till I die. What’s done is done; I have to look ahead.

La besó en la mejillla lo más cerca posible de la boca, deseando con pasión permanecer a su lado eternamente para preservarla de las sombras. Olía a yerbas y tenía la piel fría. Supo que amarla era su destino inexorable.

This is what women want: to be safe, to be valued, to live in peace, to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over their bodies and lives, and above all, to be loved.

...era apenas la suma de dos soledades y de muchas ausencias.

Las fotografías engañan al tiempo, suspendiéndolo en un trozo de cartón donde el alma queda bocabajo, decía

Tenía un pie en la ilusión obligada y otro en la realidad secreta

The only cure for so much misfortune is love. It’s not the force of gravity that keeps the universe in balance, but the binding power of love.

Lo puedo leer en tus ojos, vienes de una noche de amor.

She has a fixation on love. Strong trouble. The girl left her window open one clear night and it crawled into her body while she was asleep. There's no spell can cure it.

El orgullo de quien se cree hermosa daba a su andar un ritmo insolente.

He had the awkward tenderness of someone who has never been loved and is forced to improvise

January 8 has been a lucky day for me. I have started all my books on that day, and all of them have been well received by the readers. I write eight to ten hours a day until I have a first draft, then I can relax a little. I am very disciplined. I write in silence and solitude. I light a candle to call inspiration and the muses, and I surround myself with pictures of the people I love, dead and alive.

Se reunían un par de veces al año en cualquier punto del mapa para vivir unos días de ilusión y regresar luego con el cuerpo agradecido y el alma alborozada.

Lanzarme con otro libro es tan grave como enamorarme, un impulso alocado que exige dedicación fanática. Con cada uno, como ante un nuevo amor, me pregunto si me alcanzarán las fuerzas para escribirlo y si acaso semejante proyecto vale la pena: hay demasiadas páginas inútiles y demasiados amoríos frustrados.

Hay grandeza y dignidad en la tragedia, por eso es fuente de inspiración, pero no quiero tragedia, por inmortal que sea, quiero una dicha sin bulla, íntima y muy discreta, para no provocar los celos de los dioses, siempre tan vengativos...

All you will have is the present. Waste no energy crying over yesterday or dreaming of tomorrow. Nostalgia is fatiguing and destructive, it is the vice of the expatriate. You must put down roots as if they were forever, you must have a sense of permanence.

Compartieron una alegre relación y no la llamaron amor.

We are all born happy. Life gets us dirty along the way, but we can clean it up. Happiness is not exuberant or noisy, like pleasure or joy; it’s silent, tranquil, and gentle; it’s a feeling of satisfaction inside that begins with self-love. You need to love yourself as I do, as all those who know you do, especially Alma’s grandson.

The lack of a father leaves a hole in a woman’s heart, Lucia. A girl needs to feel she is protected; she needs masculine energy to develop trust in men and later to be able to give herself in love.

We are all born happy. Life gets us dirty along the way, but we can clean it up. Happiness is not exuberant or noisy, like pleasure or joy; it's silent, tranquil, and gentle; it's a feeling of satisfaction inside that begins with self-love

El ardor de ese beso no los abandonó en muchos días y llenó de fantasmas delicados sus noches, dejando su recuerdo en la piel, como una quemadura. La alegría de ese encuentro los transportaba levitando por la calle, los impulsaba a reír sin causa aparente, los despertaba sobresaltados en la mitad de un sueño. Se tocaban los labios con las puntas de los dedos y evocaban exactamente la forma de la boca del otro.

Ella se consideraba a sí misma como un cometa navegando en el viento y, asustada de su propio motín interior, cedía a veces a la tentación de pensar en alguien que pusiera freno a sus impulsos; pero esos estados de ánimo le duraban poco. Cuando meditaba en su futuro se tornaba melancólica, por eso prefería vivir desaforada mientras le fuera posible.

There is no worse suffering than to love with fear,

...se enamoró de su porte aristocrático, su apellido y el ambiente que lo rodeaba.

Se encerraba en su habitación a escuchar sus sinfonías predilectas y deleitarse en su propia tristeza

Zacharie did not learn of the sorrow his wife was living becasue she was careful to hide it. Tete kept that first love, the stromngest in her life, a secret. She mentioned it only rarely because she could not offer Zacharie a passion of the same intensity; the relationship they shared was genntle and free of urgency.

Love is a condition that tends to cloud men’s reason, but it is not fatal. Usually all the patient needs is to have his love returned, and he will snap out of it and begin to sniff the air in search of new prey

When a man’s earning his living doing things he doesn’t like, he feels like a slave; when he’s doing what he loves, he feels like a prince.

Pregúntate qué sientes y qué te niegas a sentir.

Take note: If little by little you stop loving me, I’ll stop loving you little by little. If suddenly you forget me Don’t come looking for me, I’ll already have forgotten you. —PABLO NERUDA “If you forget me” THE CAPTAIN’S VERSES

She asked herself a thousand times why she had hungered so desperately to belong body and soul to Joaquin Andieta when truth she had never been totally happy in his arms, and could explain it only in terms of first love. She had been ready to fall in love when he came to the house to unload some cargo; the rest was instinct. She had merely obeyed the most powerful and ancient of calls, but it had happened an eternity ago and seven thousand miles away. Who she was then and what she had seen in him she could not say, only that now her heart was far away from there. Not only was she tired of looking for him but deep down she did not want to find him; at the same time, though, she could not go on riddled with doubt. She needed an ending for that phase in order to begin a new love with a clean slate

We’re not old because we are seventy. We start to grow old as soon as we are born, we change every day, life is a continuous state of flux. We evolve. The only difference is that now we are a little closer to death. What’s so bad about that? Love and friendship do not age.

Ίσως βρισκόμαστε στον κόσμο για να ψάχνουμε τον έρωτα, να τον συναντάμε και να τον χάνουμε, ξανά και ξανά. Με κάθε έρωτα ξαναγεννιόμαστε και με κάθε έρωτα που τελειώνει ανοίγει και μια πληγή. Είμαι γεμάτη περήφανες ουλές.

male vanity goes deeper and is costlier. Look at their military uniforms and medals, the pomp and solemnity with which they show off, the extreme measures they employ to impress women and make other men envious; their luxurious toys, like cars, and their toys of supremacy, like weapons.

Olía a yerbas y tenía la piel fría. Supo que amarla era su destino inexorable.

Ella lo llamó con una sonrisa coqueta, último requisito para concluir que esa joven podía robarle hasta los pensamientos.

After love, the worst fixation is gold,

Su vida estaba hecha de ruinas encadenadas sin variantes, salvo aquellas marcadas por las estaciones. Sólo existía trabajo y cansancio para ella

Francisco encontró en esos sencillos elementos un profundo sentido estético y decidió que más tarde tomaría algunas fotografías para su colección. Nunca pudo hacerlo

Mario no tenía humor para la chabacanería y había superado hacía años cualquier tendencia a la promiscuidad

I go, but I always remember you.

Esta es la historia de una mujer y de un hombre que se amaron en plenitud, salvándose así de una existencia vulgar.

He did not know that she had seen her own destiny, that she had summoned him with the power of her thought, and that she had already made up her mind to marry without love.

La tensión se aflojó poco a poco. Ella tomó entre sus manos la oscura cabeza de su amigo y lo miró. Sonrieron aliviados, divertidos, temblorosos, seguros de que no intentarían una aventura fugaz porque estaban hechos para compartir la existencia en su totalidad y emprender juntos la audacia de amarse para siempre

So firm did Nivea's determination become that she wrote in her diary that she would give up marriage in order to devote herself completely to the struggle for women's suffrage. She was not aware that such a sacrifice would not be necessary, and that she would marry a man for love who would back her up in her political goals.

Era ella quien se abría como una sandía madura, roja, jugosa, tibia, ella quien sudaba esa fragancia penetrante de mariscos, ella quien lo mordía, lo arañaba, lo chupaba, gemía, agonizaba de sofoco y de placer. Era en su carne compasiva donde se sumergía hasta perder el aliento y volverse esponja, medusa, estrella de altamar.

We have often said that loving each other is our destiny, that we have loved each other in past lives and will go on meeting in lives to come. Or it may be there is no past or future, and everything takes place simultaneously in the universe’s infinite dimensions. If that is so, we remain together forever. It’s fantastic to be alive. We are still seventeen years old, my Alma.

The simple recipe for success that Mendel had instilled in his children from the cradle on consisted in never complaining, never asking for anything, striving to be the best in everything you do, and never trusting anyone. Alma had to carry this heavy weight on her back for several decades, until love helped her shed some of it. Her stoic attitude contributed to the air of mystery surrounding her, long before she had any secrets to keep.

volveremos a encontrarnos en mejores circunstancias o en otras vidas

Si una mujer ofrece la mejilla para que su novio no la bese en la boca, hasta un ciego puede ver que ya no siente amor.

We learn to live with sadness like a great, lovely companion, because it’s a soft sadness that softens the heart and makes you open to everything.

إذا كانت الحرية هي الحق الأول للإنسان، فلابد لها، وبجدارة أكبر، أن تكون كذلك بالنسبة لتلك الكائنات التي ولدت وفي جانبيها أجنحة.

Gringos invented two terms that are untranslatable into most languages: “snack” and “quickie,” to refer to eating standing up and loving on the run . . . that, too, sometimes standing up.

Absolute silence greeted the mystery of death, and for a time impossible to measure they waited, motionless, while Lynn's spirit rose from her body. Severo felt a long howl surging from the center of the earth and passing through his body to his lips, but it did not escape. The scream invaded him, filled him, and burst inside his head in a silent explosion. Portrait in Sepia, Isabel Allende.

En cada ocasión debía acomodar su estado de ánimo a las exigencias del momento, pero al terminar la jornada, en el silencio de su habitación, pasaba revista a los acontecimientos y concluía que en medio del diario desafío lo más conveniente era no pensar demasiado para evitar que el miedo o la ira lo paralizaran.

I felt the strength of his desire, his hands at my waist, at the back of my neck, in my hair, his lips on my face and neck; I caught his young man’s scent, heard his voice murmuring my name, and I felt blessed. How could I in less than a minute go from the sadness of having been abandoned to the joy of feeling loved?

The North Americans' sense of time is very special. They are short on patience. Everything must be quick, including food and sex, which the rest of the world treats ceremoniously. Gringos invented two terms that are untranslatable into most languages: “snack” and “quickie,” to refer to eating standing up and loving on the run . . . that, too, sometimes standing up. The most popular books are manuals: how to become a millionaire in ten easy lessons, how to lose fifteen pounds a week, how to recover from your divorce, and so on. People always go around looking for shortcuts, and ways to escape anything they consider unpleasant: ugliness, old age, weight, illness, poverty, and failure in any of its aspects.

The Indians’ insistence on clinging to their customs had to be the work of Satan there was no other explanation which is why the friars went out to hunt down and lasso the deserters and then whipped their doctrine of love and forgiveness into them.

He had always suspected that on her travels she had taken a lover, or perhaps even several, but the confirmation of this longstanding, serious love awoke in him retrospective jealousy that would have destroyed the happiness of the moment had Roser allowed it. With her implacable common sense, she showed him that she had not robbed him of anything to give to Aitor. She had not loved him any the less, because that love was always hidden in another chamber of her heart and didn't interfere with the rest of her life.

Since when has a man not beaten his wife? If he doesn't beat her, it's either because he doesn't love her or because he isn't a real man. Since when is a man's paycheck or the fruit of the earth or what the chickens lay shared between them, when everybody knows he is the one in charge? Since when has a woman ever done the same things as a man? Besides, she was born with a wound between her legs and without balls, right, Senora Clara?

As soon as the period of mourning for Dona Ester was over and the big house on the corner was finished, Esteban Trueba and Clara del Valle were married in a modest ceremony. Esteban gave his wife a set of diamond jewelry, which she thought beautiful. She packed it away in a shoe box and quickly forgot where she had put it. They spent their honeymoon in Italy and two days after they were on the boat. Esteban was as madly in love as an adolescent, despite the fact that the movement of the ship made Clara uncontrollably ill and the tight quarters gave her asthma. Seated by her side in the narrow cabin, pressing cold compress to her forehead and holding her while she vomited, he felt profoundly happy and desired her with unjust intensity considering the wretched state to which she was reduced. On the fourth day at sea, she woke up feeling better and they went out on deck to look at the sea. Seeing her with her wind-reddened nose, and laughing at the slightest provocation, Esteban swore that sooner or later she would come to love him as he needed to be loved, even if it meant he had to resort to extreme measures. He realized that Clara did not belong to him and that if she continued living in her world of apparitions, three-legged chairs that moved of their own volition, and cards that spelled out the future, she probably never would. Clara's impudent and nonchalant sensuality was also not enough for him. He wanted far more than her body; he wanted control over that undefined and luminous material that lay within her and that escaped him even in those moments when she appeared to be dying of pleasure. His hands felt very heavy, his feet very big, his voice very hard, his beard very scratchy, and his habits of rape and whoring very deeply ingrained, but even if he had to turn himself inside out like a glove, he was prepared to do everything in his power to seduce her.

Ella se miro en los mil pedazos rotos del espejo. Su piel, iluminada por las velas, tenfa el color irreal de las figuras de cera. Miguel comenzo a acariciarla y ella vio transformarse su rostro en el caleidoscopio del espejo y acepto al fin que era la mas bella de todo el universe porque pudo verse con los ojos que la miraba Miguel".

My Nini wanted to get another dog, as much like Daisy as possible, but my Popo said that it was not a question of replacing her, but of trying to live without her. “I can’t, Popo. I loved her so much!” I sobbed inconsolably. “That affection is inside you, Maya, not in Daisy. You can give it to other animals, and what’s left over you can give to me,

She entered without knocking, while he was reading in bed, filling his burrow with the flutter of her long hair and her undulating arms. She touched his books without the slightest reverence, and even dared to take them from their sacred shelves; she blew the dust off their covers without the least respect and tossed them onto the bed, chatting all the while as he trembled with desire and surprise, unable to extract from his whole encyclopedic vocabulary a single word to hold her there, until she finally took leave of him with a kiss on the cheek that continued to burn: a single, terrible kiss on which he built a labyrinth of dreams where the two of them were a prince and princess hopelessly in love.

Lo único que va a sanarte es el amor, siempre que le des cabida.

En la tenue claridad de la luna cada uno adivinó el amor en los ojos del otro.

Щастието не е бляскаво и шумно като удоволствието или радостта. То е тихо, кротко и нежно, вътрешно състояние на задоволство, което започва, когато обикнеш себе си.

He was glad to have her there and he wished he loved her.

Η ευτυχία δεν είναι επιδεικτική ούτε θορυβώδης, όπως η ηδονή ή η χαρά. Είναι σιωπηλή, ήρεμη, απαλή, μία εσωτερική αίσθηση ικανοποίησης που ξεκινάει από την αγάπη για τον ίδιο μας τον εαυτό.

I am happier when I love than when I am loved. I adore my husband, my son, and my grandchildren, my mother, my dog, and, frankly, I don't know if they even like me. But who cares? Loving them is my joy.

Although the family was afraid that without him Lillian would soon shrivel up with grief, she showed them that death is not an insurmountable obstacle to communication between those who truly love each other.

Until Lillian’s death in 1973, Larry received her unconditional love, and according to the psychologist who saved his marriage, he could not expect the same from his wife; in marriage nothing is unconditional.

October 22, 2002 Yesterday, Alma, when at last we could meet to celebrate our birthdays, I could see you were in a bad mood. You said that all of a sudden, without us realizing it, we have turned seventy. You are afraid our bodies will fail us, and of what you call the ugliness of age, even though you are more beautiful now than you were at twenty-three. We’re not old because we are seventy. We start to grow old as soon as we are born, we change every day, life is a continuous state of flux. We evolve. The only difference is that now we are a little closer to death. What’s so bad about that? Love and friendship do not age. Ichi

He had had his mouth washed out with soap so often that he stopped calling Rosette his sister, but not enough to make him stop loving her with that terrible, possessive, absolute love that solitary children give.

At the age of twenty-two, suspecting their time was limited, Ichimei and she had gorged on love to enjoy it to the full, but the more they tried to exhaust it, the wilder their desire became, and whoever says that every flame must sooner or later be extinguished is wrong, because there are passions that blaze on until destiny destroys them with a swipe of its paw, and even then hot embers remain that need only a breath of oxygen to be rekindled.

El viaje de la vida se hace de largos trechos tediosos, paso a paso, día a día, sin que suceda nada impactante, pero la memoria se hace con los acontecimientos inesperados que marcan el trayecto. Esos son los que vale la pena narrar.

In brief, I am in a splendid moment of my destiny. This is good news for women in general: Life gets easier once we get through menopause and are done with raising kids, but only if we minimize our expectations, give up resentment, and relax in the knowledge that no one, except those closest to us, gives a damn about who we are or what we do. Stop pretending, faking it, lamenting, and flagellating ourselves about silly stuff. We have to love ourselves a lot and love others without calculating

They would regret that they had not killed him; he would get out of that hole and find Juliana sooner or later, even if he had to pursue her to hell itself. “Oh, you won’t have to go that far, we are on our way to California," Diego said in farewell

Todo desapareció a su alrededor y sólo tuvieron consciencia de sus labios unidos tomando y recibiendo. En verdad apenas fue un beso, la sugerencia de un contacto esperado e inevitable, pero ambos estaban seguros de que ése sería el único beso que pudieran recordar hasta el fin de sus días y de todas las caricias la única en dejar una huella certera en sus nostalgias. Supieron que dentro de años todavía podrían evocar con presión el contacto húmedo y cálido de sus labios, el olor a pasto fresco y la tormentosa sensación de sus espíritus.

She tried to recall the cold, the silence, and that precious feeling of owning the world, of being twenty years old and having her whole life ahead of her, of making love slowly and calmly, drunk with the scent of the forest and their love, without a past, without suspecting the future, with just the incredible richness of that present moment in which they stared at each other, smelled each other, kissed each other, and explored each other's bodies, wrapped in the whisper of the wind among the trees and the sound of the nearby waves breaking against the rocks at the foot of the cliff, exploding in a crash of pungent surf, and the two of them embracing underneath a single poncho like Siamese twins, laughing and swearing this night would last forever, that they were the only ones in the whole world who had discovered love.

Francisco l'attrasse a sé e le cercò le labbra. Fu un bacio casto, tiepido, lieve tuttavia ebbe l'effetto di una scossa tellurica nei loro sensi. Entrambi percepirono la pelle dell'altro prima mai così precisa e vicina, la pressione delle loro mani, l'intimità di un contatto anelato fin dagli inizi del tempo. Li invase un calore palpitante nelle ossa nelle vene nell'anima, qualcosa che non conoscevano o che avevano del tutto scordato, perché la memoria della carne è fragile. Tutto scomparve intorno ed ebbero coscienza solo delle labbra unite che prendevano e ricevevano.

She fell in love with freedom. In the Sommers' home she had lived shut up within four walls, in a stagnant atmosphere where time moved in circles and where she could barely glimpse the horizon through distorted windowpanes. She had grown up clad in the impenetrable armor of good manners and conventions, trained from girlhood to please and serve, bound by corset, routines, social norms, and fear. Fear had been her companion: fear of God and his unpredictable justice, of authority, of her adoptive parents, of illness and evil tongues, of anything unknown or different; fear of leaving the protection of her home and facing the dangers outside; fear of her own fragility as a woman, of dishonor and truth. Hers had been a sugar-coated reality built on the unspoken, on courteous silences, well-guarded secrets, order, and discipline. She had aspired to virtue but now she questioned the meaning of the word.

During the years he spent in Venezuela he thought he had once and for all overcome the solemnity that had been an essential part of his nature from childhood, as though he was in mourning for all the world's suffering, violence and evil. Faced with so many disasters, happiness seemed to him obscene. In love with Roser in the green, warm country of Venezuela, he had vanquished the temptation to cloak himself in sadness.

When she was eight she had fallen in love with Ichimei with all the intensity of childhood passions; with Nathaniel it was the calm love of later years. The two of them fulfilled different roles in her heart, but they were equally indispensable: she was sure that without Ichimei and Nathaniel she wouldn’t survive. She had loved the former vehemently; she needed to see him all the time, to run off with him to the Sea Cliff garden, which was full of tremendous hiding places where they could discover the infallible language of caresses. After Ichimei was sent to Topaz, Alma was nourished by her memories of the garden and the pages of her diary, filled to the margins with all her sighs and regrets written in tiny handwriting. Even at this age she gave signs of her fanatical tenacity for love. With Nathaniel on the other hand, it would never have occurred to her to go and hide in the garden. She loved him devotedly and thought she knew him better than anyone else. In the nights he had rescued her from the wardrobe, they slept together holding hands; he was her confidant, her closest friend. The first time she discovered dark stains in her underpants she waited trembling for Nathaniel to come back from school so she could drag him off to the bathroom to show him the evidence that she was bleeding down below. Nathaniel had a vague idea of the reason, but not of the practical steps to take, and so he was the one who had to ask his mother, as Alma didn’t have the courage to do so. He knew everything she was going through. She had given him copies of the keys to her diaries but he had no need to read them to know how she felt.