Literary Birthday – 2 August – Isabel Allende

Happy Birthday, Isabel Allende, born on 2 August 1942.

Isabel Allende Quotes

1. I write to understand my circumstances, to sort out the confusion of reality, to exorcise my demons. But most of all, I write because I love it!
2. You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend, or not.
3. I have the perfect space for writing: a little house in my backyard—warm, private, luminous, silent. In it, I keep the first editions of my books, dictionaries, maps, and the research for the book in process; also photographs of the people I love, dead and alive. It is perfect but not really indispensable.
4. Every person is born with a talent, and happiness depends on discovering that talent in time.
5. I wrote The House of the Spirits at night on the kitchen counter in an apartment in Caracas; Of Love and Shadows: A Novel in a closet; The Stories of Eva Luna in a car and in coffee shops. To be able to write, I need only time and silence.
6. My desk is like a ‘U’, so I have my computer and lots of dictionaries because I write in Spanish and I live in English.  And in the case of my latest book, everything happened in French, you know, in a French colony, so I have books in French, I mean, dictionaries in French and English and Spanish, and I work like that.
7. If I didn’t write my soul would dry up and die.
8. 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.
9. Writing is my job. I don’t think of it as art.
10. My writing comes not from the happy moments, but from struggle and grief.
11. I’m aware of the mystery around us, so I write about coincidences, premonitions, emotions, dreams, the power of nature, magic.
12. All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom.
13. Write what should not be forgotten.

MUST-READ: Isabel Allende’s Writing Process

Isabel Allende is a Chilean writer. Allende—novelist, feminist, and philanthropist—is one of the most widely-read authors in the world, having sold more than 80 million books. She is famous for writing novels such as The House of the Spirits and City of the Beasts. She uses slipstream fiction techniques in her writing. She received Chile’s National Literature Prize in 2010. In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded Allende the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2018 she received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, and in 2024 she received the Bodley Medal from Oxford University. Her latest book is Story Telling: A Writing Life. Visit IsabelAllende.com and follow her on Instagram and Bluesky.

Source for photograph: Isabel Allende’s Press Photos

by Amanda Patterson
Are you interested in more authors’ birthdays? Please click here: The Complete Author Birthday Calendar