Our top 25 countdown continues.

Coming in at number 18, Isabel Allende.

This is the first of two conversations I've had with the legendary writer,

and the part of this first conversation that has stayed with me

is Isabel's tender reflections on love and life-altering loss.

You have a tradition, January 8th, you sit down, you begin writing.

Were you able to do that even this year in the midst of a pandemic?

I did it last year and this year too. The pandemic has been good for me because it forces me to

sit here in the attic where I work and just be here. I'm used to having a lot of time alone

in silence. That's something that I need for my work. So it has not been so hard. Plus, I am living in a sort of

extended honeymoon because I got married right before the pandemic. Now we are locked in here

with my husband. There's nowhere to escape. I was about to say that this is when a lot of relationships are going to be tested.

Well, ours has been tested, and I think we are surviving pretty well.

We are learning patients, and I needed to learn patients much more than him, actually.

Even in your 70s?

He's a patient man.

Yeah. Still learning patients. I love that when I imagined your attic, this is the most elegant

attic I've ever seen. You want to take a look? There's nothing much here. Look.

It's so bright. It's bright and white and I try to keep it clean because it's really small.

So I have to be very, very well organized.

When I start a new book, I take out everything that is related to the previous work that I have been doing

so that the whole room is prepared just for the book with a dictionary, is the research, everything I need, and nothing else.

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