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
Similar quotes
What I've said before, only half in joke, is that everybody in Ireland is famous. Or, maybe better, say everybody is familiar.
Seamus HeaneyRead
In good speaking, should not the mind of the speaker know the truth of the matter about which he is to speak.
PlatoRead
To think that before the hills were formed, or the channels of the sea were scooped out, God loved me; that from everlasting to everlasting His mercy is upon His people. Is not that a consolation?
Charles SpurgeonRead
The idea of modernity is beginning to lose its vitality. It is losing it because modernity is no longer a critical attitude but an accepted, codified convention.
Octavio PazRead
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
Bertrand RussellRead
In those days, our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in the making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.
Abraham LincolnRead