Isabel Johansen Quotes

This time of year, the purple blooms were busy with life- not just the bees, but butterflies and ladybugs, skippers and emerald-toned beetles, flitting hummingbirds and sapphire dragonflies. The sun-warmed sweet haze of the blossoms filled the air.
"When I was a kid," said Isabel, "I used to capture butterflies, but I was afraid of the bees. I'm getting over that, though." The bees softly rose and hovered over the flowers, their steady hum oddly soothing. The quiet buzzing was the soundtrack of her girlhood summers. Even now, she could close her eyes and remember her walks with Bubbie, and how they would net a monarch or swallowtail butterfly, studying the creature in a big clear jar before setting it free again. They always set them free.
As she watched the activity in the hedge, a memory floated up from the past- Bubbie, gently explaining to Isabel why they needed to open the jar. "No creature should ever be trapped against its will," she used to say. "It will ruin itself, just trying to escape." As a survivor of a concentration camp, Bubbie only ever spoke of the experience in the most oblique of terms. ~ Susan Wiggs

There is a Day
There's always a day
when I can't believe what was there.
There's always that day
when I didn't understand how to bear.
There's never a day
where I stood in the crowd.
There's never that day
where I knew He was Proud.
There is a day
where I can be alone.
There is that day
where I shall make it known. ~ Isabel Aanya Leigh

Capitaine Etienne Relais was known to be incorruptible in an ambience in which vice was the norm, honor for sale, and laws made to be broken, and men operated on the assumption that he who did not abuse power did not deserve to have it. ~ Isabel Allende

The biggest straitjacket is all the prejudices that we carry around, and all the fears. But what if we just surrender to the fear? There are things greater than fear. The great, wonderful quality of human beings is that we can overcome even absolute terror, and we do. ~ Isabel Allende

Shit," she muttered. She'd heard the word from her guard many times, but only now did she understand the real use of profanity. That one word said exactly what she was feeling, said it better than a hundred other words could have done. ~ Erika Johansen

My life has consisted of challenging authority, which I was taught as a young girl. Life is only noise between two abysmal silences. Silence before birth, silence after death. ~ Isabel Allende

We're coming to the point where I may need to split my men to evade pursuit. If so, my choice of bodyguard for you will depend much on your won abilities."
"Well, I am a fast reader, and I know how to make stew."
Carroll nodded in approval "You've a sense of humor about all this, Lady. You'll need one. You're entering a life of great danger. ~ Erika Johansen

A memoir is an invitation into another person's privacy. ~ Isabel Allende

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

She gasped again and opened blue eyes lit with erotic mischief. "Are you trying to steal the reins from me?"
Even with his penis buried deep within her, even moments from climax, he arched an eyebrow. "You have them only by my permission. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

Reading is like looking through several windows which open to an infinite landscape ... For me life without reading would be like being in prison, it would be as if my spirit were in a straightjacket; life would be a very dark and narrow place. ~ Isabel Allende

The present Western civilization ... is dominated by the extravert viewpoint. There are plenty of reasons for this domination: extraverts are more vocal than introverts; they are more numerous, apparently in the ratio of three to one; and they are accessible and understandable, whereas the introverts are not readily understandable, even to each other, and are likely to be thoroughly incomprehensible to the extraverts. ~ Isabel Briggs Myers

Everything I write has to be connected to my life. One of the things that always comes up in my writing is the search for freedom, especially in women. ~ Isabel Allende

ISABEL: Sorry I missed my session Monday.
DR. RUSH: Would you like to tell me why?
ISABEL: I was depressed.
DR. RUSH: That's a good reason to come to therapy. ~ Lisa Lutz

He was not oppressed by a crowd because in the midst of all the hullabaloo he always found a quiet place for his soul. ~ Isabel Allende

When I write fiction, I never try to deliver a message; I just want to tell a story. But I admit that I want the story to be memorable and the characters to touch the reader's heart. ~ Isabel Allende

Tyler did not believe in hell. He had decided, long ago, that if God wanted to punish them, there was infinite opportunity right here; hell would be superfluous.
But if there was a hell on earth, Tyler had certainly found it. ~ Erika Johansen

Absolute silence greeted the mystery of death, and for a time impossible to measure they waited, motionless, while Lynn's spirit rose from her body. Severo felt a long howl surging from the center of the earth and passing through his body to his lips, but it did not escape. The scream invaded him, filled him, and burst inside his head in a silent explosion.
Portrait in Sepia, Isabel Allende. ~ Isabel Allende

The greatest compliment a writer can be given is that a story and character hold a reader spellbound. I'm caught up in the story writing and I miss a good deal of sleep thinking about it and working out the plot points. ~ Iris Johansen

Isabel sends her brother a look that could boil him in oil if she had that particular paranormal talent. A thought hits me: maybe she has. It will be fun to find out. ~ Marianne Curley

But even the most valiant and honorable men sometimes fail their women. ~ Isabel Allende

Everyone's hurting, we just choose different ways to distract our suffering ~ Isabel Curtis

Those static images have the uncanny ability to jar the memory and bring places and people back to life. They bridge the present with the past and validate as real what the passage of time has turned into hazy recollections. Were it not for them, my experiences would have remained as just imperfect memories of perfect moments. ~ Isabel Lopez

I asked,"Are you going to pick up next time I call you?"
"I did this time didn't I?"
"Say yes."
"Yes. Conditionally yes." ... ...
... "What conditions.?"
"Sometimes you do things like call me forty times a day and leave obscene voicemails and that's why I don't pick up."
"Ridiculous. That doesn't sound like me. I'd never call an even number of times. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

What kind of world does the humanitarian contemplate as affording him full scope? It could only be a world filled with breadlines and hospitals, in which nobody retained the natural power of a human being to help himself or to resist having things done to him. And that is precisely the world that the humanitarian arranges when he gets his way. ~ Isabel Paterson

The first two, three, four weeks are wasted. I just show up in front of the computer. Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn't show up invited, eventually she just shows up. ~ Isabel Allende

My personal style is bipolar. Sometimes I feel like dressing in a boyish leather jacket; other times I want to dress more elegantly. Most of the time it's what I like to call 'comfortable chic': Giuseppe Zanotti flat sandals, Rag & Bone jeans, slouchy Isabel Marant shirts. ~ Joan Smalls

But even Carlin's words had no weight when fury washed over Kelsea; it was a tide that cleared all obstacles. ~ Erika Johansen

Writing is like riding a bicycle: you don't forget how, even if you go for years without doing it. ~ Isabel Allende

The names of persons and living creatures demand respect, because when we speak to them we touch their heart and become a part of thier life force. ~ Isabel Allende

He almost caused a riot among the ladies; he filled all the empty space, as if someone had let a tiger loose in this world of female longing. Even ~ Isabel Allende

The simple recipe for success that Mendel had instilled in his children from the cradle on consisted in never complaining, never asking for anything, striving to be the best in everything you do, and never trusting anyone. ~ Isabel Allende

Leadership is obliged to justify itself daily. ~ Isabel Paterson

To one's own fault, twas life's giving.
To one's understanding, twas his choosing. ~ Isabel Aanya Leigh

My best friend was Aboriginal. She taught me about 'bush tucker' - the food of the land, the different things you could eat if you got lost in the bush, like grasses and berries. There's this tree called the billygoat plum - the fruit is quite nice. ~ Isabel Lucas

As a fourteen-year-old, Isabel had searched the dictionary. She knew that if a wife lost a husband, there was a whole new word to describe who she was: she was now a widow. A husband became a widower. But if a parent lost a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or a daughter. That seemed odd. As ~ M.L. Stedman

I came back because I had to. Because there was nothing wrong in the world except that I was getting older in it. Because Sam and Grace had told me I should go if that was what I
wanted.
What I wanted was:
I wanted.
Isabel - ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Quote taken from Chapter 1:
"Is Petey Samson a bloodhound for real?" Blue asked. "I could've sworn he's a mixed breed, what my folks used to call a pound mutt."
"Oh, brother," Alma said. "I wished you hadn't said that."
"I'll have you know Petey Samson is no pound mutt," Isabel said, shaking her finger at Blue. "His best breeding lies in his bloodhound line," she said.
"I didn't know that," Blue said.
"Pay no mind to Isabel," Alma said. "She's just being overprotective of her fur baby. ~ Ed Lynskey

Every time I asked a question, that magnificent teacher, instead of giving the answer, showed me how to find it. She taught me to organise my thoughts, to do research, to read and listen, to seek alternatives, to resolve old problems with new solutions, to argue logically. Above all, she taught me not to believe anything blindly, to doubt, and to question even what seemed irrefutably true, such as man's superiority over woman, or one race or social class over another. ~ Isabel Allende

When I fall in love I'm obsessed. ~ Isabel Allende

Isabel's infamous tweets ranged from the cartoonish and impossible:
Im going to pull ur tongue out of ur mouth wrap it around ur neck n strangle u w it so hard ur eyes will pop out. i will pee in the sockets.
To the quaint:
Get ur fcking hands off him bitch i will cut u. #RupertLIsMine
To the cryptically disturbing:
I watch u in your sleep.
I would never condone Isabel's scary tweets, but you had to give the girl credit for managing to stay under 140 characters every time. ~ Goldy Moldavsky

Gradually, she had realized that this was just another wound that would heal if she didn't hold it close, but released the pain and not let it poison her. ~ Iris Johansen

It (picking cotton) was like picking a hundred pounds of feathers, a hundred pounds of lint dust. It was one of the most backbreaking forms of stoop labor ever known. ~ Isabel Wilkerson