Quotes from Maya's Notebook

Isabel Allende ·  387 pages

Rating: (18.9K votes)


“Mi Popo decía que el amor nos vuelve buenos. No importa a quién amemos, tampoco importa ser correspondidos o si la relación es duradera. Basta la experiencia de amar, eso nos transforma.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“Es fácil juzgar a otros cuando uno no ha sufrido esa experiencia”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“our demons lose their power when we pull them out of the depths where they hide and look them in the face in broad daylight.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“It’s easy to judge others when we are not going through the same thing.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“As my Popo used to say, life is a tapestry we weave day by day with threads of different colors, some heavy and dark, others thin and bright, all the threads having their uses. The stupid things I did are already in the tapestry, indelible, but I’m not going to be weighed down by them till I die. What’s done is done; I have to look ahead.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook



“La vida es una tapiceria que se borda dia a dia con hilos de muchos colores, unos pesados y oscuros, otros delgados y luminosos, todos los hilos sirven.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“La mente es mucho mas interesante que el cuerpo.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“Happiness is slippery, it slithers away between your fingers, but problems are something you can hold on to, they’ve got handles, they’re rough and hard”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“Nothing strong can be built on a foundation of lies and omissions.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“I'd realized that in writing happiness is useless-without suffering there is no story.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook



“Me resulta complicado escribir sobre mi vida, porque no sè cuánto recuerdo y cuánto es producto de mi imaginación;la estricta verdad puede ser tediosa y por eso, sin darme ni cuenta, la cambio o la exagero, pero me he propuesto corregir ese defecto y mentir lo menos posible en el futuro.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“Writing is like riding a bicycle: you don’t forget how, even if you go for years without doing it.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“Hay grandeza y dignidad en la tragedia, por eso es fuente de inspiración, pero no quiero tragedia, por inmortal que sea, quiero una dicha sin bulla, íntima y muy discreta, para no provocar los celos de los dioses, siempre tan vengativos...”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“Entonces se acariciaron titubeantes, reconociendose, tanteando el alma para asegurarse de que no estaban equivocados.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“Los chilenos veneran al Papa, pero no le hacen caso en asuntos sexuales y sus concecuencias, porque un anciano celibe, de buen pasar economico, que no ha trabajado en su vida, poco sabe de eso.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook



“دون كرامة يصبح المرء أعزل ،يفقد إنسانيته و يفقد روحه”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“They taught using an Italian system of experimental education in which the students did whatever the fuck we wanted.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“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, quote from Maya's Notebook


“На всичкото отгоре трябваше да ми даде и пари, понеже пристигнах без стотинка. Увери ме, че баба ми му пратила пощенски запис за тази цел, но не вярвам, тя никога не се сеща за прости решения. Пò би подхождало на характера ѝ да ми прати лопата, за да изровя съкровище.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“Happiness is slippery, it slithers away between your fingers, but problems are something you can hold on to, they’ve got handles, they’re rough and hard.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook



“La vida costaba demasiado trabajo, no valía la pena levantarse por la mañana y ver arrastrarse las horas sin una finalidad. Descansar. Morir. Ser o no ser, como Hamlet. "No pienses, Maya, trata de mantenerte ocupada”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“You’re going to have time to get bored, Maya. Take advantage of it to write down the monumental stupidities you’ve committed, see if you can come to grips with them,”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“La felicidad es jabonosa, se escurre entre los dedos, pero a los problemas uno puede aferrarse, tienen asidero, son ásperos, duros.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“الجميع يندمون فيما بعد على رسائل الحب التي كتبوه”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“Un dolor así, dolor del alma, no se quita con remedios, terapia o vacaciones; un dolor así se sufre, simplemente, a fondo, sin atenuantes, como debe ser”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook



“Si es cierto que las casas se impregnan de la vida transcurrida entre sus paredes, en el caso de los Corrales hay maldad.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“Intimacy needs time to mature—a shared history, tears shed, obstacles overcome, photographs in an album. It’s a slow-growing plant.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“I had a serious library at my disposal, because my Popo believed that culture entered by osmosis and it was better to start early, but my favorite books were fairy tales.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


“Since we’re going to suffer, let’s clench our teeth,” she said. Pain like that, pain of the soul, does not go away with remedies, therapy, or vacations; you simply endure it deep down, fully, as you should. I would have done well to follow my Nini’s example, instead of denying that I was suffering and stifling the howl that was stuck in my chest.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Maya's Notebook


About the author

Isabel Allende
Born place: in Lima, Peru
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Popular quotes

“How do you wake up? It was one thing to know that you had been asleep all your life, but something else to wake up from it, to find out you were really alive and it wasn't anybody's fault but your own. Of course that was the problem.

All right. Everything is a dream. Nothing hangs together. You move from one dream to another and there is no reason for the change. Your eyes see things and your ears hear, but nothing has any reason behind it. It would be easier to believe in God. Then you could wake up and yawn and stretch and grin at a world that was put together on a plan of mercy and death, punishment for evil, joy for good, and if the game was crazy at least it had rules. But that didn't make sense. It had never made any sense. The trouble was, now that he was not asleep and not awake, what he saw and heard didn't make sense either.

Mishmash, he thought. You know enough to know how you feel is senseless, but you don't know enough to know why.”
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“Astral Weeks,” insofar as it can be pinned down, is a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend. It is a precious and terrible gift, born of a terrible truth, because what they see is both infinitely beautiful and terminally horrifying: the unlimited human ability to create or destroy, according to whim. It’s no Eastern mystic or psychedelic vision of the emerald beyond, nor is it some Baudelairean perception of the beauty of sleaze and grotesquerie. Maybe what it boils down to is one moment’s knowledge of the miracle of life, with its inevitable concomitant, a vertiginous glimpse of the capacity to be hurt, and the capacity to inflict that hurt.”
― Lester Bangs, quote from Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung


“It’s a dark night, sang the kettle, and the rotten leaves are lying by the way; and, above, all is mist and darkness, and, below, all is mire and clay; and there’s only one relief in all the sad and murky air; and I don’t know that it is one, for it’s nothing but a glare; of deep and angry crimson, where the sun and wind together; set a brand upon the clouds for being guilty of such weather; and the widest open country is a long dull streak of black; and there’s hoar–frost on the finger–post, and thaw upon the track; and the ice it isn’t water, and the water isn’t free; and you couldn’t say that anything is what it ought to be; but he’s coming, coming, coming!—”
― Charles Dickens, quote from The Cricket on the Hearth


“Holding on for dear life, I was overcome with the perfect nearness of him, the ache of human solitude nearly conquered.”
― Jennifer DeLucy, quote from Seers of Light


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