Isabel Allende

ISABEL ALLENDE

Date of Birth: August 2, 1942
Birthplace: Lima, Peru
Current Residence: San Rafael, CA
Profession: Journalist and teacher.

I like plots, rich plots, something happening all the time. As you might have noticed, I'm not in the modern tradition; I'm old fashioned, completely nineteenth-century. I like storytelling.
-Isabel Allende, Contemporary Authors interview, Vol. 130

Listen, Paula. I am going to tell you a story, so that when you wake up you will not feel so lost. The legend of our family begins at the end of the last century, when a robust Basque sailor disembarked on the coast of Chile with his mother's reliquary strung around his neck and his head swimming with plans for greatness.
-Isabel Allende, Paula

Allende sees no person and no issue in simplistic terms. She always tries to understand what makes people think and behave as they do, even when she disagrees with them or dislikes them, and thus her work contains depths of empathy and compassion rarely found in fiction that embraces a political cause....[Allende] is a writer of deep conviction, but she knows that in the end it is people, not issues, who matter most.
-Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World