Top 100 Isabel's Quotes
#1. It was Isabel's main accessory as she dashed in late to work, always with two or three CDs, usually new, tucked under her arm. At night, when I crawled out on my rooftop, it was what I heard first,
Sarah Dessen
#2. The prison was a shiver running up the spine of the shadowed background. The shiver running up Isabel's spine was only a piece of the haunted, crawling darkness before her. This prison, this disturbed place of long-lost hope, was the place she'd been looking for.
-Isabel, by E. L. Schoeman
E.L. Schoeman
#3. Isabel's indelible absence is now an organ in our bodies whose sole function is a continuous secretion of sorrow.
Aleksandar Hemon
#4. I tried and tried to sleep, lulled by the movement, the purring of the motor, and the snores of the other passengers, but it's never been easy for me to sleep, and much less now, when I still have residues of the wild life running through my veins.
Isabel Allende
#5. My personal style is bipolar. Sometimes I feel like dressing in a boyish leather jacket; other times I want to dress more elegantly. Most of the time it's what I like to call 'comfortable chic': Giuseppe Zanotti flat sandals, Rag & Bone jeans, slouchy Isabel Marant shirts.
Joan Smalls
#6. I'm on an Isabel Marant kick. She does an amazing job of making things that are everyday-wearable but also special and a little bit different. I definitely like that she has a '70s western vibe. There's something that's very fun and vintage in what she's doing.
Jennifer Morrison
#7. 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
Isabel Allende
#8. Very few old folk are happy, Irina. Most of them are poor, aren't healthy, and have no family. It's the most fragile and difficult stage of life, more so than childhood, because it grows worse day by day, and there is no future other than death.
Isabel Allende
#9. I never try to give a message in my books. It's about living with characters long enough to hear their voices and let them tell me the story. Sometimes I would love to have a happy ending, and it doesn't happen because the character or the story leads me in another direction.
Isabel Allende
#10. Oh my God. What in - "
I was going to be killed by two generations of beautiful women. While naked.
"Mom," Isabel snapped, interrupting. "Do you mind not staring? It's totally perv.
Maggie Stiefvater
#11. It's going to go away because we all need silence. We all need time to reflect and think. I am not at all pessimistic about this.
Isabel Allende
#12. Anything that could be conceived of that would separate black people from white people was devised and codified by someone in some state in the South. There were colored and White waiting rooms everywhere, from doctor's offices to the bus stations, as people may already know.
Isabel Wilkerson
#13. Evening, lads." The redhead curled her fingers around the back of Sullivan's neck and pulled his head in for a quick kiss. "Hey, baby, I missed you." It took a few head-scratching seconds to realize that he was looking at Isabel Roma.
Elle Kennedy
#14. No one is all good or all bad, and there's many different ways to go about your life.
Isabel Gillies
#15. Leave them," said Isabel. "Jamie can iron them himself. It's very therapeutic for men to iron. Therapeutic for women, that is.
Alexander McCall Smith
#16. Although women do two-thirds of the world's labor, they own less than one percent of the world's assets.
Isabel Allende
#17. I write a letter to my mother every day, because in that letter, I write down my day. And if I don't write it down, then tomorrow I will forget it and it's gone.
Isabel Allende
#18. It's easy to judge others when we are not going through the same thing.
Isabel Allende
#19. The measure of a man's estimate of your strength," he finally told them, "is the kind of weapons he feels that he must use in order to hold you fast in a prescribed place.
Isabel Wilkerson
#20. There's not a person in Virginia won't try to sell you a horse. It's in 'em.
Isabel Scott Rorick
#21. I've always liked the idea of memoirs, going into someone else's life, going through someone else's day and getting out of your own head.
Isabel Gillies
#22. You only have what you give. It's by spending yourself that you become rich.
Isabel Allende
#23. You only have one life, but if you live it well, that's enough. The only reality is now, today. What are you waiting for to be happy?
Isabel Allende
#24. Having a point to start is important. You know that when you decide to write something it's like a commitment. It's like falling in love.
Isabel Allende
#25. You see, I am friends with a lobsterman. Because we are friends, which feels lucky anyway, I get access to the most amazing fish. It's like having a backstage pass - a culinary jackpot that feels almost undeserved.
Isabel Gillies
#26. He's a woman!" he shouted, horrified.
Padre Mendoza and the others came running up, only to stand and stare, mute with amazement, at the virginal breasts of the warrior.
"It's going to be much more difficult to kill him now," Padre Mendoza sighed finally.
Isabel Allende
#27. I never meant to hurt you, Isabel. Had I known what I would find when I came north, I would never have agreed to Leighton's request ... That is a lie. Had I known that I would find you when I came north, I would have come years ago.
Sarah MacLean
#28. Quote taken from Chapter 1:
I know what." Isabel reached under the end table, took out the game board, and rattled the Band-Aid box containing the letter tiles. "It's been a week-and-a-half since our last Scrabble game.
Ed Lynskey
#29. Isabel frowned. "Alma Trumbo, you did not just dig up a human bone from our flowerbed. It's got to be a dinosaur bone, dinky or not."
"A dinosaur bone, eh?" The short, stout Alma gave her tall, slim sister the old up and down. "What then, are we the Flintstones living in Bedrock?
Ed Lynskey
#30. That's why I preach today. Do not do spite," he said. "Spite does not pay. It goes around and misses the object that you aim and comes back and zaps you. And you're the one who pays for it.
Isabel Wilkerson
#31. Never mind gas masks and fallout shelters in the event of biological warfare. Many New Yorkers move from place to place equipped with the essentials of vermin assault weaponry: mouse traps, roach spray, and sticky tapes. In some neighborhoods, it's a must.
Isabel Lopez
#32. He had a principle: if you lend money and never see the person again, that's money well spent.
Isabel Allende
#33. I do not put myself in a box and say, for instance, I'm writing post-colonial literature. I don't know what I'm writing. That's the business of professors and critics. My job is to tell a story, and that's it.
Isabel Allende
#34. Oh, but it's our tears that make us human, Isabel.
Susan Meissner
#35. I was alone, without a single cent, in an unknown country. If I'd learned anything from last year's ill-fated adventures, though, it was not to get overwhelmed by minor inconveniences.
Isabel Allende
#36. Food," I suggested. "Sleep. That's what I need. To get the hell away from here."
Cole frowned at me, as if I'd suggested "ducks" and "yoga".
Maggie Stiefvater
#37. It was a long time ago: 'Angela's Ashes' by Frank McCourt. It was a great story that was lasting, and I loved it so much. I also love Nora Ephron. I gobble up everything she writes. Also, I love Anthony Bourdain, very irreverent and funny.
Isabel Gillies
#38. I am an American citizen and it is my home now. I like the U.S.A., which is not a place too many people have liked since Bush. The U.S. has a young population, and everything can change within a year.
Isabel Allende
#39. 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.
Isabel Allende
#40. Americans have a warrior's mentality, most of them. That's how this society was built. The fact that you own a gun and shoot to defend your life is a very American way of thinking.
Isabel Allende
#41. These sociopaths,' he said. 'What do they feel like? Inside?'
Isabel smiled. 'Unmoved,' she said. 'They feel unmoved. Look at a cat when it does something wrong. It looks quite unmoved. Cats are sociopaths, you see. It's their natural state.
Alexander McCall Smith
#42. The one that came really easy was the Japanese lover, because he's like a ghost in the book. He's always in the background like a spirit, like a shadow, almost. There's a very delicate line there.
Isabel Allende
#43. When you tell a story in the kitchen to a friend, it's full of mistakes and repetitions. It's good to avoid that in literature, but still, a story should feel like a conversation. It's not a lecture.
Isabel Allende
#44. Well, I'm a daughter of the great migration as, really, the majority of African Americans that you meet in the north and west are products of the great migration. It's that massive. Many of us owe our very existence to the fact that people migrated.
Isabel Wilkerson
#45. I love memoirs and biographies, learning about other people's lives. Two of the ones that I loved so much were actually edited by the same person who edited my book, too. I loved 'Angela's Ashes.' I loved 'Glass Castle' so much.
Isabel Gillies
#46. If you do something that's going to get somebody a job, then they'll be able to pay for their kid's school, and then their kid is going to be a doctor, and then that doctor is going to probably help who knows how many other people, so it's very motivating. Much more fun than going to the beach.
Isabel Dos Santos
#47. It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them.
Isabel Colegate
#48. At my age days dissolve like salt in water; the day's gone and I don't even know what I've done with the hours.
Isabel Allende
#50. My best friend was Aboriginal. She taught me about 'bush tucker' - the food of the land, the different things you could eat if you got lost in the bush, like grasses and berries. There's this tree called the billygoat plum - the fruit is quite nice.
Isabel Lucas
#51. It's funny how much easier it is to see others' shortcomings and give advice when you're not personally involved, for it's almost impossible to see the light when you're swimming in shit.
Isabel Lopez
#52. Whatever the circumstances of your life, the understanding of type can make your perceptions clearer, your judgements sounder, and your life closer to your heart's desire
Isabel Briggs Myers
#53. He missed his venerable master, who had marked him forever with a thirst for knowledge as persistent as the drunk's thirst for alcohol or the ambitious man's thirst for power. He no longer had his mentor's library or his inexhaustible fount of experience.
Isabel Allende
#54. My mother has always been a worker bee, but she's also a serious foodie.
Isabel Gillies
#55. I seek truth and beauty in the transparency of an autumn leaf, in the perfect form of a seashell on the beach, in the curve of a woman's back, in the texture of an ancient tree trunk, but also in the elusive forms of reality.
Isabel Allende
#56. But that's how nostalgia is: a slow dance in a large circle. Memories don't organize themselves chronologically, they're like smoke, changing, ephemeral, and if they're not written down they fade into oblivion.
Isabel Allende
#57. You have to fight for respect. In life, even cashiers at the supermarket, if they're women, they're differently treated. It's a reality. The reality is not nice; it's not pretty.
Isabel Coixet
#58. This is the same Lizzie Chao who I went to high school with," Hart said. "I believe so," Isabel said. "She's married," Hart said. "She's separated," Isabel said. "Which means she's married with an option to trade up," Catherine said.
John Scalzi
#59. When I write fiction, I never try to deliver a message; I just want to tell a story. But I admit that I want the story to be memorable and the characters to touch the reader's heart.
Isabel Allende
#60. I grew up partially in Switzerland but mostly in Australia. I lived in Kakadu for a short time - it's an Aboriginal community. My best friend growing up was Aboriginal. She taught me so much.
Isabel Lucas
#61. I don't think of literature as an end in itself. It's just a way of communicating something.
Isabel Allende
#62. I'm not willing to sign a contract. They want everything. They want the rights to do the movie and everything else they can think of, forever. There's no limit to the contract. In this universe and universes to be discovered - I'm not making this up - this is in the contract.
Isabel Allende
#63. County supervisors relented only after losing their case in the U.S. Supreme Court, choosing finally to reopen the schools rather than face imprisonment.
Isabel Wilkerson
#64. There are a lot of great love stories. It's just the best thing. Why wouldn't you write about it? Why wouldn't you want to read about it? But it's hard to write about. It's weird to have such a powerful and universal feeling and hope that you can write that and make it real for people.
Isabel Gillies
#65. There's never a day without a doubt,
where man must think of what is there.
In sight we can only see so far.
In mind- only thought must be our care.
Life cannot see what is ahead of me.
My mind cannot stop for more.
Time does not halt at the flash of red.
Isabel Aanya Leigh
#66. To one's own fault, twas life's giving.
To one's understanding, twas his choosing.
Isabel Aanya Leigh
#68. I love Stella McCartney because she's timeless and classic, and I love Isabel Marant for wearability - you don't need 'an occasion' for her clothes.
Louise Nurding
#69. I think even if you haven't been divorced, you can hopefully relate to having to navigate through a really difficult time and see how you can get through to the other side and how you can stay positive, even if there's some really bad stuff happening.
Isabel Gillies
#70. Isabel Wilkerson's book is a masterful narrative of the rich wisdom and deep courage of a great people. Don't miss it!
Cornel West
#71. Many children fly like birds, guess other people's dreams, and speak with ghosts, but ... they all outgrow it when they lose their innocence.
Isabel Allende
#72. May love's kindred treasure box fling your luminescent glove.
Isabel Yosito
#73. My worst flaw is that I tell secrets, my own and everybody else's.
Isabel Allende
#74. A man who cooks is very sexy. A woman who cooks is not that sexy. Because it's associated in our mind to the domestic cliche of the woman.
Isabel Allende
#75. Life is very mysterious and there are many things we don't know. And there are elements of magic realism in every culture, everywhere. It's just accepting that we don't know everything and everything is possible.
Isabel Allende
#76. It's not easy to slather your face with oil. It requires a little bit of work to smooth it on and rub it in. You become more familiar with the feel of your own skin and face.
Isabel Gillies
#77. Sometimes life turns out hard, Isabel. Sometimes it just bites right through you. And sometimes, just when you think it's done its worst, it comes back and takes another chunk.
M.L. Stedman
#78. According to Cecilia, Valdivia's star rose when he met me and began to decline when he left me behind, a frightening theory because I do not want the glory for his successes or the guilt for his failures. Each of us is master of his or her own destiny.
Isabel Allende
#79. Life's pain. You just have to get over as much of it as you can.
-Isabel Culpeper
Maggie Stiefvater
#80. The media could do a much better job, that's for sure, especially the media that targets women ... Human rights? They couldn't care less!
Isabel Allende
#81. And the truth is that if a writer is successful, you gain readers. It benefits all the writers. It's important for all the writers that as many of us as possible be successful.
Isabel Allende
#82. The Oberlin/Cleveland area is where the underground railroad came out, so it's an interesting historical place. I love Ohio and really loved Oberlin.
Isabel Gillies
#83. Change, of course, is growth, and anything that is not growing is either paralysed or it's not alive, because that's life; we always change and we grow.
Isabel Lucas
#84. Are you still on Minnesota time?" I asked.
"I am on whatever time makes this call last longer," he said.
"What's the next meal from now?
Maggie Stiefvater
#85. Of all the characters I've played, I relate the most to Isabel in Hugo. She's so adventurous and fun. She just loves reading books and those are her adventures. Isabel is a heightened version of my personality.
Chloe Grace Moretz
#86. My books are based on emotions, feelings, relationships. In these areas women are experts, so it's not strange that the main characters of my novels are females.
Isabel Allende
#87. THE HONEYEATER story was mesmerizing: the story took hold of me and I felt compelled to write it. I was also inspired by a few female authors (among them, Doris Lessing and Isabel Allende) I've admired over the years
women who preceded me and who gave me the courage to even begin.
Yolanda A. Reid
#88. Writing, when all is said and done, is an attempt to understand one's own circumstance and to clarify the confusion of existence, including insecurities that do not torment normal people, only chronic nonconformists, many of whom end up as writers after having failed in other undertakings.
Isabel Allende
#89. I write until the first draft is finished, and then I feel that I can get out. But, during the time of the writing of the first draft, I don't go out. I'm just locked away, writing. It's a time of meditation, of going into the story.
Isabel Allende
#90. Indiana was such a devout disciple of Shakti that she had once considered taking her name until her father, Blake Jackson, managed to convince her that a Hindu goddess's name was not appropriate for a tall, voluptuous blond American with the looks of an inflatable doll.
Isabel Allende
#91. If there's anything in life you consider worthwhile achieving - go for it. I was told many times to forget show business - I had nothing going for me. But I pursued it, anyway. Voila!
Isabel Sanford
#92. Dear is your heart and close your hand, I relinquish all to love's dysmorphic command.
Isabel Yosito
#93. You write a book and it's like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean. You don't know if it will ever reach any shores. And there, you see, sometimes it falls in the hands of the right person.
Isabel Allende
#94. I'm very optimistic because I think that the real strength of a nation like the United States comes from blending cultures. There's no way that you can close the frontiers anywhere. The borders are there to be violated permanently.
Isabel Allende
#95. Now, we ain't got nothing to do with God's business, she says, sitting back in her seat. She adjusts herself and straightens her scarf, contenting herself with whatever the day has in store.
Isabel Wilkerson
#96. You would give your life for your little baby. It's not the same when you are in a sexual relationship unless you feel that you are loved as you love.
Isabel Allende
#97. We cannot safely assume that other people's minds work on the same principles as our own. All too often, others with whom we come in contact do not reason as we reason, or do not value the things we value, or are not interested in what interests us.
Isabel Briggs Myers
#98. Sometimes journalists ask me, "What's the message?" There is no message. I think that fiction should not be trying to give messages. Just tell a story.
Isabel Allende
#99. I think there's lots of people with family connections but who are actually nowhere. If you're hard-working and determined, you will make it, and that's the bottom line. I don't believe in an easy way through.
Isabel Dos Santos
#100. I love Athena. I love all the goddesses and the archetypes and what they represent because I think they're always going to be relevant not just to women but to humanity. They're living energy. There's a lot we can still learn from them.
Isabel Lucas
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