The Isabel Factor Quotes

Don't you think...doesn't it seem sometimes like life is like a plane?...And we're all piloos, you know, of our own planes. When things are going smoothly then we're, like, on autopilot, but sometimes things get a little, well, turbulent and then we have to land the plane on our own..."What about the air traffic control?"...Well, sure. Sometimes the guy is helpful, but maybe he's drunk?...Or maybe there's this big fog so you just put your hands on the controls and look for the runway lights and do your best. On your own. ~ Gayle Friesen

You must be mistaken," Isabel said, unconcerned by the insult that the words carried.
"I assure you i am not. Voluptas is nearly always portrayed wrapped in roses. If that were not enough, her faces confirms her identity."
"You cannot tell a goddess from a face carved in marble," she scoffed.
"You can tell Voluptas by her face."
"I've never even heard of this goddess, and you know what she looks like?"
"She is the goddess of sensual pleasure."
Isabel's mouth fell open at the words. She could not think of a single thing to say in response. "Oh ~ Sarah MacLean

The best-adjusted people are the
'psychologically patriotic,' who are glad to be what they are. ~ Isabel Briggs Myers

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

After fifty most of the bullshit is gone. ~ 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

My husband, who is a lawyer, is very careful with words and with the truth. He thinks that the truth exists, and it's something that is beyond questioning, which I think is totally absurd. I have several versions of how we met and how wonderful he was and all that. At least twenty. And I'm sure that they are all true. He has one. And I'm positive that it's not true. ~ Isabel Allende

The most poor and backward areas in the world are those in which women are subjugated and exploited. Improving the situation of the woman improves the family, the community, and by extension the whole country. ~ Isabel Allende

She did not believe that the world was a vale of tears but rather a joke that God had played and that it was idiotic to take it seriously. ~ Isabel Allende

My parents absolutely did not think of themselves as part of the Great Migration. They knew they were part of a great wave. No one really talked about it in those terms or gave it a name. ~ Isabel Wilkerson

You go on with your life, because life goes on," says Isabel. "You see this in anyone who has survived a traumatic situation. My own daughter died, for example." Her only daughter, Paula Frias, died of porphyria in 1992 at the age of twenty-seven. "At first you think you can't live with this," says the author, who just turned sixty-five. "It's just too much. Then life begins to take over. One morning you wake up and you want to eat chocolate. Or walk in the woods. Or open a bottle of wine. You get back up on your feet." "When you can, right?" "You have no choice!" Isabel insists. "You cannot let the bullies keep you on the floor! I have been on my knees a thousand times, and I always get up. ~ Mark Matousek

Dwellings that went for eight to twenty dollars a month to white families were bringing twelve to forty-five dollars a month from black families, those earning the least income and thus least able to afford a flat at any rent, in the early stages of the Migration. Thus began a pattern of overcharging and underinvestment in black neighborhoods that would lay the foundation for decades of economic disparities in the urban North. ~ Isabel Wilkerson

There is room in the human heart for all the divinities. ~ Isabel Allende

She'll never understand. The realization washes all the fight out of me, leaving behind only heartache. I gently pull my wrist from her grip. "Because," I say, my voice so soft it's nearly swallowed up by the trees, "I'm standing here, telling you how much you hurt me, and you can't hear it." Tears fill my eyes. I've lost the strength to hide them. "You broke my heart, and you didn't even notice. How can I ..." My throat closes up, I look away. "How could I ever trust you to put the pieces back together? ~ Isabel Sterling

I don't want to die in pain or in an undignified way, I don't want any of the people I love to die in, die painfully. But I'm aware of the fact that they may die before I do and I have to part with them and take the loss. The hardest thing of love is to let go. But I think I can get let go of almost anybody. ~ Isabel Allende

we play the cards we've been dealt - as Isabel in Secrets of a Charmed Life says - based on finite knowledge, and while being largely unaware that everyone around us is playing their own cards. ~ Susan Meissner

But that's exactly the problem, retorted Isabel. We're all stuck with the same tired and trusted ideas. If we refused to entertain the possibility of something radically different, then we'd never make any progress - ever. We'd still be thinking that the sun revolved round the earth. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Photographs deceive time, freezing it on a piece of cardboard where the soul is silent. ~ Isabel Allende

I have travelled all over the world and one thing that amazes me is that I can communicate with people. My story may be different but emotionally we are all the same. ~ Isabel Allende

As freak legislation, the antitrust laws stand alone. Nobody knows what it is they forbid. ~ Isabel Paterson

Now the sole remedy for the abuse of political power is to limit it; but when politics corrupt business, modern reformers invariably demand the enlargement of the political power. ~ Isabel Paterson

In all social classes except the most privileged, abnegation and hard work are considered the supreme female virtues; a spirit of sacrifice is a question of honor: the more one suffers for family, the prouder one feels. Women are used to thinking of their mate as a foolish child whose every serious fault, from drunkenness to domestic violence, they forgive . . . because he's a man. ~ Isabel Allende

October 22, 2002 Yesterday, Alma, when at last we could meet to celebrate our birthdays, I could see you were in a bad mood. You said that all of a sudden, without us realizing it, we have turned seventy. You are afraid our bodies will fail us, and of what you call the ugliness of age, even though you are more beautiful now than you were at twenty-three. We're not old because we are seventy. We start to grow old as soon as we are born, we change every day, life is a continuous state of flux. We evolve. The only difference is that now we are a little closer to death. What's so bad about that? Love and friendship do not age. Ichi ~ Isabel Allende

I must not get ahead of myself. If I do not narrate the events of my life with rigor and harmony, I will lose my way. ~ Isabel Allende

I think even if you haven't been divorced, you can hopefully relate to having to navigate through a really difficult time and see how you can get through to the other side and how you can stay positive, even if there's some really bad stuff happening. ~ Isabel Gillies

The humanitarian wishes to be a prime mover in the lives of others. He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order, by which men have the power to help themselves. The humanitarian puts himself in the place of God.
But he is confronted by two awkward facts; first, that the competent do not need his assistance; and second, that the majority of people positively do not want to be "done good" by the humanitarian. Of course, what the humanitarian actually proposes is that he shall do what he thinks is good for everybody. It is at this point that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine. ~ Isabel Paterson

You're an interesting person, Jack." Sullivan said. "I wish I could figure out what you were thinging when you punched Stern and turned on Isabel."
"Well, I think that's the thing." Holloway said. "I think it's clear that sometimes I just don't think."
"I think you do." Sullivan said. "It's just you think about you first. The not thinking part comes right after that. ~ John Scalzi

There's basically an element of fiction in everything you remember. Imagination and memory are almost the same brain processes. When I write fiction, I know that I'm using a bunch of lies that I've made up to create some form of truth. When I write a memoir, I'm using true elements to create something that will always be somehow fictionalized. ~ Isabel Allende

The prison was a shiver running up the spine of the shadowed background. The shiver running up Isabel's spine was only a piece of the haunted, crawling darkness before her. This prison, this disturbed place of long-lost hope, was the place she'd been looking for.
-Isabel, by E. L. Schoeman ~ E.L. Schoeman

And she, Isabel, had gone along with this and all the time what was happening was she was becoming increasingly possessive of Jamie without ever having to acknowledge it. Now there was another woman, a girl really, and there was an obvious intimacy between them, which would exclude her as it would have to do, and that would be the end of everything. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

The state funneled money to private academies for white students. ~ Isabel Wilkerson

My mum said that as you age you have to smell good and be clean and don't hate anybody because that makes you older. Um I don't agree. I think that of course you have to smell good and be clean but there's much more that you have to do. Don't complain, exercise, be be strong, um work, be creative, be related to the world, have causes, fight for them passionately. I think all those things are important. I I'm not going to give up and just smell good. ~ Isabel Allende

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. ~ Isabel Allende

Before I start writing, before I have an idea of where and when the story happens, I research it thoroughly. ~ Isabel Allende

My pulse was racing, my skin searing, and suddenly I felt light-headed. I sat back and put hands over my mouth. My room looked exactly the same as it had before I'd picked up his call. I threw my phone at the wall. Halfway through its flight, I realized that my father would kill me if I destroyed it, but it smacked the wall and slid to the ground without any pieces falling off it. It looked exactly the same as before. Nothing had changed. Nothing. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Isabel was squeezing the girl to her, sobbing at the touch of her, the legs fitting snugly around her waist and the head slotting automatically into the space beneath her chin, like the final piece of a jigsaw. She was oblivious to anything and anyone else ...
The woman and child were knitted together like a single being, in a world no one could enter. ~ M.L. Stedman

My son, the Holy Church is on the right, but Jesus Christ was always on the left. ~ 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