Isabel Allende on writing

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

Jealousy. The person who hasn’t felt it cannot know how much it hurts, or imagine the madness committed in its name. (p368)

For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.

To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say and to finish without knowing what you have written.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau1712–1778

• Love

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

C. S. Lewis1898–1963

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin1706–1790

• Reading