Isabel Allende

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

Guzman, from an illustrious family that had fallen on hard times thanks to generations of lazy sons who squandered money and land, was spending his last years in an isolated mansion surrounded by mountains and rocks, but full of sentimental memories.

Any capacity for compassion had gone: everyone looked after only themselves and their loved ones

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

Quakers are always to be found where they’re most needed. They’re saints; the only saints I respect.”

Isidro del Solar was her destiny, but marriage weighed on her like a burden.

without all the distractions Laura suffered from: without having to worry about the melodramas of children and relatives, or do battle with domestic staff, waste time on social visits, and fulfill her role as a dutiful wife. Isidro was omnipresent: the universe revolved around him, his wishes and demands. That was how his grandfather and father had been, that was how all men were

the del Solars had experienced a luxury unknown in Chile, where sobriety was a virtue and the more money one had, the more care was taken to hide it

narrow South American country that clung to the mountains so as not to topple into the sea