I don't think the world will destroy itself in a nuclear cataclysm. On the contrary, we have the capacity to save ourselves and save the planet, and we will use it.
Isabel AllendeRead
Memory is fiction. We select the brightest and the darkest, ignoring what we are ashamed of, and so embroider the broad tapestry of our lives.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Memory shapes our identity through selective recollection, affecting how we perceive our lives.
In this quote, Isabel Allende suggests that memory is not a straightforward record of events but rather a subjective narrative we craft by highlighting certain experiences while downplaying others. This selective process allows us to create a richer story of our lives, reflecting both our joys and sorrows, but can also obscure the complexities and truths we choose to forget or ignore.
Themes
MemoryLifeSelective RecollectionIdentitySubjective
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about personal growth, one could say, 'As Isabel Allende reflects, memory is fiction; we weave our own narratives from our experiences.'
More from Isabel Allende
All quotes βMy mother is a great artist, but she always treated her paintings like minor postcards. Had she pursued it, she would have been a great artist. Instead, she looked down on her art.
Isabel AllendeRead
I never try to convey a message, I just want to tell a story. Why that story in particular? I have no idea, but I have learned to surrender to the muse. I become obsessed with a theme or with certain stories; they haunt me for years, and finally, I write them.
Isabel AllendeRead
My life is about ups and downs, great joys and great losses.
Isabel AllendeRead
I'm interested in people who have to overcome obstacles, people who are not sheltered by the umbrella of the establishment, marginals.
Isabel AllendeRead
I'm a writer. In Latin America, they say I'm a Latin-American writer because I also write in Spanish and my books are translated, but I am an American citizen and my books are published here, so I'm also an American writer.
Isabel AllendeRead
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At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles.
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When we die, as when the scenes have been fixed on to celluloid and the scenery is pulled down and burnt β we are phantoms in the memories of our descendants. Then we are ghosts, my dear, then we are myths. But still we are together. We are the past together, we are a distant past. Beneath the dome of the mysterious stars, I still hear your voice.
Jostein GaarderRead
I got a statistic for you right now. Grab your pencil, Doug. There are five billion trees in the world. I looked it up. Under every tree is a shadow, right? So, then, what makes night? I'll tell you: shadows crawling out from under five billion trees! Think of it! Shadows running around in the air, muddying the waters you might say. If only we could figure a way to keep those darn five billion shadows under those trees, we could stay up half the night, Doug, because there'd be no night!
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The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
B. F. SkinnerRead
The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.
Arthur SchopenhauerRead
Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That's the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Read