A Long Petal of the Sea Isabel Allende Get the bookReport a mistake

A Long Petal of the Sea

by Isabel Allende · 2019

19 quotes ★ 4.06 (117,123) Historical

Quotes from the Book

Pain is unavoidable, but suffering is optional.

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

We have to defend democracy, but remember that not everything is politics. Without science, industry, and technology, no progress is possible, and without music and art, there's no soul.

Going around in a sulk will get you nowhere. Pain is unavoidable, but suffering is optional.

My heart is broken, he told himself. It was at that moment he understood the profound meaning of that common phrase: he thought he heard the sound of glass breaking and felt that the essence of his being was pouring out until he was empty, with no memory of the past, no awareness of the present, no hope for the future.

The deep Chile of the fascists had always been there, beneath the surface, just waiting to emerge. It was the triumph of the arrogant Right, the defeat of the people who believed in that utopian revolution.

So much hatred, so much cruelty . . . I don't understand,' said Victor. His mouth was dry and the ords stuck in his throat. 'We can all turn into savages if we're given a rifle and an order,' said another prisoner who had come over to them.

although they knew this was a mere formality. Victor felt relieved: if one lives long enough, circles close.

There was no defense against the shells, he said, but they had calculated that three volumes of philosophy could stop bullets.

The poet thought this was a splendid riposte, and so accepted him on board, together with fishermen, farm and factory workers, manual laborers, and intellectuals as well, despite instructions from his government to avoid anyone with ideas.

Maybe the war against this cancer is lost, but meanwhile we can win a few battles.

Se repetía la metáfora del abedul, que se dobla ante la tempestad, pero no se quiebra.

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

Ese día de verano, 4 de agosto de 1939, en Burdeos, quedaría para siempre en la memoria de Víctor Dalmau, Roser Bruguera y otros dos mil y tantos españoles que partían a ese país larguirucho de América del Sur, aferrado a las montañas para no caerse al mar, del que nada sabían. Neruda habría de definirlo como un «largo pétalo de mar y vino y nieve…» con una «cinta de espuma blanca y negra

Without science, industry, and technology, no progress is possible, and without music and art, there’s no soul,

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.

A las treinta y ocho horas sin comer ni dormir, tratando de darle agua de beber a un chico adolescente que se estaba muriendo en sus brazos, algo se le reventó a Victor en el pecho. «Se me rompió el corazón», musitó. En ese momento entendió el significado profundo de esa frase, creyó escuchar un sonido de cristal quebrado y sintió que la esencia de su ser se derramaba e iba quedando vacío, sin memoria del pasado, sin consciencia del presente, sin esperanza para el futuro.

It made her feel sorry for her husband: she was discovering how vulnerable to flattery a conceited old man could be.

She embellished the facts because she was aware that life is how we tell it, so why would she jot down trivia?

About Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende Llona is a Chilean-American novelist who writes in the "magic realism" tradition and is considered one of the first successful women novelists in Latin America. She often draws on her own experiences and focuses on the lives of women, weaving myth and realism together. She adopted U.S. citizenship in 2003 and resides in California.

More about the author →

More by Isabel Allende

The House of the Spirits Isabel Allende

★ 4.30

Portrait in Sepia Isabel Allende

★ 4.03

Inés of My Soul Isabel Allende

★ 4.00

Maya's Notebook Isabel Allende

★ 3.89

All books by Isabel Allende →

About the book

"A Long Petal of the Sea" is a historical novel by the Chilean-American writer Isabel Allende. Opening at the height of the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, it follows two young people fleeing the aftermath of Franco's Fascist victory: Roser, a pregnant young widow, and Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love. To survive, the two enter a marriage neither of them desires. Together with some two thousand other refugees, they escape across the Pyrenees into France and eventually board the SS Winnipeg, a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda, bound for Chile, "the long petal of sea and wine and snow."

The novel is preoccupied with exile, displacement, and the long shadow that political violence casts over ordinary lives. Spanning more than fifty years and multiple continents, it traces its characters from the Spanish Civil War through decades in Chile, including the country's own upheaval under Pinochet, weaving together themes of love, endurance, reconciliation, adaptation, and forgiveness. Allende, who writes in a realist mode here with far fewer supernatural elements than in her earlier work, returns to the family-saga form and to the time and setting that launched her career, filtering sweeping history through intimate human experience.

Critics greeted the book as a return to familiar Allende territory. The Los Angeles Times noted that it marks a return to the world of "The House of the Spirits," with a more expansive engagement of revolution and exile. The Guardian described it as a sweeping historical saga told largely through episodic, omniscient narration covering half a century in a relatively short book, while The New York Times highlighted its grounding in the real humanitarian act of Pablo Neruda, who lobbied to save over 2,000 refugees aboard the Winnipeg. Some reviewers, including at The Washington Post, found the epic sentimental, and readers were divided between those who felt it was Allende at her best and those who found the density of history overwhelmed the characters.