The House of the Spirits

by Isabel Allende

Gone with her were the spirits and the guests, as well as that luminous gaiety that had always been present because 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 if He himself never had.

“Helping one’s neighbor is a value that exists.”

Charity, like Socialism, is an invention of the weak to exploit the strong and bring them to their knees.”

But there was no one with whom she could speak about these things, not even her grandfather, because people preferred not to know.