Isabel Allende Quotes

In 'Out of the Dark,' I'm talking about my own life. I'm not talking as a character or speaking as a character. I was not as free as when I write fiction.

I believe that one reason I began writing essays - a form without a form, until you make it - was this: you didn't have to borrow from an emotionally and visually upsetting past, as one did in fiction, apparently, to write your story.

I write the kind of stuff I'd like to watch.

I aspire to write what are called 'familiar essays.' They begin in the personal and end in the universal. It's not for me to say if I have been successful at it. But that is the hope.

You have to write your own story, your own graph and rhythm.

My writing did turn out to be quite intact, as it has all my experiences gathered at one place.

I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment. In fact, maybe that's really it. In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing.

Nonfiction is more personal for me. It's more personal in that it's more direct, and actually it's always been more direct, even when I first started doing pieces.

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.

I tell the stories that are of interest to me.

The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there primarily to tell one particular story, whereas an autobiography tries to be a full account of a life.

I think all writing is necessarily autobiographical to a greater or lesser extent, and the less it tries to be confessional, the more likely it is that you're somehow sneaking the things you need to say in there.

Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories.

I'm a novelist. I'm not a crusader, and I'm not an editorial writer. And I'm not writing fiction to convince anybody of anything.

My work looks like a comic book in form, but it's not a typical comic book in content. I write autobiographical stuff.

I'll write about myself, or people I know, or archetypal characters, but the goal is to get at some truth, not to necessarily convey my own experience as an individual to the world.

I'm not on a record like some rapper trying to boast about my clothes or where I'm from. I'm creating stories, experiences, the way places make me feel, the way a person makes me feel.

I'm a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

I never sit down to write anything personal unless I know the subject is going to go beyond my own experience and address something larger and more universal.

I essentially write for myself.

Now I say I'm a diarist with an explanation I'll get back to you on. Someday I may try and write in memoir form.

Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.'

As far as I am concerned, I write novels, and other people can do the labelling.

I don't really think of my essays as being about myself. I know it sounds insane, but I just don't think of them as a memoir. They're essays; they're not an autobiography.

I write what I write.