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Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende Quotes

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Famous Isabel Allende Quotes

“One of the characteristics of North American culture is that you can always start again. You can always move forward, cross a border of a state or a city or a county, and move West, most of the time West. You leave behind guilt, past traditions, memories. You are as if born again, in the sense of the snake: You leave your skin behind and you begin again. For most people in the world, that is totally impossible.”

PeopleIfsWorldStatesPastMovingCultureBornMemoriesCitiesBehindsImpossibleTraditionCrossesSkinsGuiltWestMoving ForwardBordersCharacteristicsSnakesAmerican CultureCountyBorn AgainBegin Again
Book:Conversations with Isabel Allende
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“I began to wonder whether anything truly existed, whether reality wasn't an unformed and gelatinous substance only half-captured by my senses....If that were true, each of us was living in absolute isolation. The thought terrified me. I was consoled by the idea that I could take that gelatin and mold it to create anything I wanted...At times I felt that the universe fabricated from the power of the imagination had stronger and more lasting contours than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around me.”

IfsIdeasRealityWantedUniverseFeltImaginationHalfWonderBloodCreaturesAbsolutesStrongerFleshSensesSubstanceRealmsIsolationLastingTerrifiedMoldCapturedFlesh And BloodGelatin
Author:Isabel Allende
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“If, for example, I saw my grandparents or my daughter for an instant, would I recognize them? Probably not, because in looking so hard for a way to keep them alive, remembering them in the most minimal details, I have been changing them, adorning them with qualities they may not have had. I have given them a destiny much more complex than the ones they lived.”

IfsWayMayHas BeensHardRememberGivenQualityDestinySawsAliveExampleDaughterComplexesDetailsInstantMy DaughterGrandparent
Book:My invented country: a memoir
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“My grandfather was dying, and told the family he had decided to die. ... At that moment I wanted so badly to write and tell him that he was never going to die, that somehow he would always be present in my life, because he had a theory that death didn't exist, only forgetfulness did. He believed that if you can keep people in your memory, they will live forever. That's what he did with my grandmother.”

PeopleIfsWritingMomentsWantedEarthDiesMemoriesForeverDyingTheoryDecidedGrandmotherThat MomentGrandfatherMy GrandmotherMy GrandfatherOur MemoriesMother EarthLive ForeverForgetfulness
Book:Conversations with Isabel Allende: Revised Edition
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