Top 100 Quotes About Sandra Cisneros
#1. When I read Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros as a freshman at Rutgers, it all clicked - that writing was all I wanted to do. It became my calling.
Junot Diaz
#2. [Jorge Luis Borges] had short stories, and I was trying to learn how to write short stories, and then he had these things in the middle that were like fables, and I loved hearing fables.
Sandra Cisneros
#3. I realize that when I moved out of my father's house I shocked and frightened him because I needed a room of my own, a space of my own to reinvent myself.
Sandra Cisneros
#4. I didn't intend to be writing - the writer's life. I was just writing what came to me at the time, but it is a map of how this writer had to break many barriers to find, not a room of her own, but a house of her own.
Sandra Cisneros
#5. What do we call our Harlem Renaissance? Maybe in the future, it won't be just Latino, maybe it'll be more multi-multi, because, you know, people are such fusions now, of so many different cultures.
Sandra Cisneros
#6. I never paid attention when people said, "That's gotta be poetry. That's gotta be fiction," except when I was in a graduate program, and you had to claim your genre.
Sandra Cisneros
#8. One of my favorite writers is Hans Christian Anderson. His stories speak to the times.
Sandra Cisneros
#9. I feel comfortable in Spanish, I chat like a parrot, but I don't have the confidence in Spanish that I do in English.
Sandra Cisneros
#10. I thought that strange syntax was the language of story books. I didn't realize those were poor translations ... English from Edwardian times.
Sandra Cisneros
#11. It's difficult for me to have a large story, a very large story - a novel is a large story. I'm used to writing and doing these little miniature paintings.
Sandra Cisneros
#12. I would drive on streets that were one-way and think, "Why are they all honking at me?"
Sandra Cisneros
#13. I think diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone.
Sandra Cisneros
#14. The beauty of literature is you allow readers to see things through other peoples eyes. All good books do this.
Sandra Cisneros
#15. I was silent as a child, and silenced as a young woman; I am taking my lumps and bumps for being a big mouth, now, but usually from those whose opinion I don't respect.
Sandra Cisneros
#16. The devil knows more from experience than from being the devil
Sandra Cisneros
#17. I think that you need to have books that talk about the lives of the poor, and they need to be involved - involved in acquisitions.
Sandra Cisneros
#18. Writing poetry helps me to write my fiction; each thing helps the other.
Sandra Cisneros
#19. In English, my name means hope. In Spanish, it means too many letters. It means sadness. It means waiting. It is like the number nine, a muddy color.
Sandra Cisneros
#20. I was reading all these male writers who were doing wild and wonderful things. It gave me permission to experiment.
Sandra Cisneros
#21. We have all this courage as writers, but then there's this fear.
Sandra Cisneros
#22. Now I feel life is really short and I have to take care of things.
Sandra Cisneros
#23. I try to be as honest about what I see and to speak rather than be silent, especially if it means I can save lives, or serve humanity.
Sandra Cisneros
#24. I felt a failure because I couldn't sustain myself from what I earned from my writing. My day jobs were what mattered, and it was hard to even get those because universities wouldn't hire me as a real writer.
Sandra Cisneros
#25. I can't stand it when people say, "If you're writing a novel, you should read this and that." Because it's like giving someone another person's prescription. How do you know that's what they need?
Sandra Cisneros
#26. I wanted to write something in a voice that was unique to who I was. And I wanted something that was accessible to the person who works at Dunkin Donuts or who drives a bus, someone who comes home with their feet hurting like my father, someone who's busy and has too many children, like my mother.
Sandra Cisneros
#27. I was interested in cross-pollinating the two. I thought there was something lovely in the little vignette forms. I wanted to explore that.
Sandra Cisneros
#28. I had no concept of this [healthy food] until very, very late in life, thanks to a trainer/nutritionist that I met who has been working with me since I was forty-five.
Sandra Cisneros
#29. One of the things I like to pack, that I take with me all the time, is my Virgensita de Guadalupe. It doesn't take much room in your suitcase. If you have one that isn't so fancy, you can use it on the plane when you're scared.
Sandra Cisneros
#31. My Spanish is a daughter's Spanish. I write, but my Spanish really is very limited.
Sandra Cisneros
#32. Instead of putting cheese with ranchero sauce, chile is really very good for you. If you put that in, you get flavoring, so you're not eating bland food, especially if you're used to spicy food.
Sandra Cisneros
#33. I look at Thich Nhat Hanh and I look at Marshall Rosenberg, and they're more concerned about the long range. And that long range means that you have to sit down with people who don't think like you. I want to reach people who don't think like me.
Sandra Cisneros
#34. I think people should read fairy tales, because we're hungry for a mythology that will speak to our fears.
Sandra Cisneros
#35. The border between the dead and the living, if you're Mexican, doesn't exist. The dead are part of your life. Like my dad, who's not here, but he's here.That's why there's the Day of the Dead. There's such a connection with the dead.
Sandra Cisneros
#36. I was a little press writer when the National Endowment for the Arts came to my rescue and gave me an award. I couldn't buy a light bulb. Almost more than the money, the awards are important because they show that someone believes in you.
Sandra Cisneros
#37. I spent my thirties living out of boxes and moving every six months to a year. It was my cloud period: I just wandered like a cloud for ten years, following the food supply. I was a hunter, gatherer, an academic migrant.
Sandra Cisneros
#38. Writing is like sewing together what I call these 'buttons,' these bits and pieces.
Sandra Cisneros
#39. Books are medicine and you have to take the right medicine that you need at that moment or that day or that time in your life.
Sandra Cisneros
#40. I find myself using Spanish words much more now that I'm older, and I guess I have the authority to do it in public spaces in ways that I felt I couldn't when I was teaching here fifteen years ago.
Sandra Cisneros
#41. So how are you supposed to learn how to drive with this guy yapping at you? My brothers were the ones who got to practice. So when you have to get on the expressway, you're afraid. That's what I think. That's why I take back routes on two-lane highways.
Sandra Cisneros
#42. The thoughts of letting go of everything I love overwhelms like a tsunami of sorrow.
Sandra Cisneros
#43. I wasn't aware that 'House on Mango Street' was so influenced by Spanish until after I finished.
Sandra Cisneros
#44. I also learned to tell a story. I think I learned from poetry how to time a story. Poetry's timing, beats and pauses. That white space on the page is as important as the black. The bottom of the page is blackout. It's performance.
Sandra Cisneros
#45. I live in a town that's two and a half hours from the border. I know people who have lived in San Antonio for generations, sometimes seven generations, their families are from there, and they are of Mexican descent, and they've never gone farther than the border.
Sandra Cisneros
#46. When I was a child, I was very shy, and there's still a part of me that's very shy.
Sandra Cisneros
#47. I don't just want to talk to the choir. I want to sit down and be respectful of the people who are most unlike me, to get them to hear me and think. It doesn't mean you're going to change them right there, but just so they can hear you and what you're saying.
Sandra Cisneros
#48. Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in
Sandra Cisneros
#49. I feel that I can teach my listener about a new word they can use too.
Sandra Cisneros
#50. The comments you'll get from a filmmaker about your performance are going to be very different. My writing workshop is about mixing it up, cross-pollinating, not only in genres but in occupations.
Sandra Cisneros
#51. Every book changes my writing because I'm always trying to do something I didn't do before. I try to do what's hard for me, what I haven't done in the past.
Sandra Cisneros
#52. When I say what I'm reading, this is what I need. I know the ills that plague me.
Sandra Cisneros
#53. Why don't we have people like Thich Nhat Hanh or Marshall Rosenberg and Nelson Mandela solving violent situations in a peaceful way?
Sandra Cisneros
#54. I usually meditate and I call my spirit allies - anyone in the spirit world that I've got connections with. Even in the spirit world you need connections!
Sandra Cisneros
#55. San Antonio drives me crazy, but Chicago drives me crazy in a different way.
Sandra Cisneros
#57. Like all guests, after a fortnight, grief is best beyond the door.
Sandra Cisneros
#58. I'm most tired after I read, after I've just done a performance, but what I try to do is to fuel and eat a really healthy meal before I perform. I want to have enough energy to talk to that last person.
Sandra Cisneros
#59. I am obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in her skin.
Sandra Cisneros
#60. Revenge only engenders violence, not clarity and true peace. I think liberation must come from within.
Sandra Cisneros
#62. You know, you want to be outrageous when you're young, so all the young people say, "Oooh ... " Now my tactics are different.
Sandra Cisneros
#63. "You're next, after the feather dancers." And you had to get their attention, because otherwise people would go, "Oh, a poet." You really have to learn.
Sandra Cisneros
#64. I remember when they started publishing Latino fiction years ago. You had to be really good to get published. Now you don't have to be that good.
Sandra Cisneros
#65. I was looking at a lot of experimental writers, and I was very intrigued by short-short fiction, writers who would write little things, what I call buttons now, little vignettes.
Sandra Cisneros
#66. It's so good for your health to take those naps. I don't know why people brag that they sleep five hours. I'd be ashamed. I'm proud that I sleep nine hours.
Sandra Cisneros
#67. I've always read broadly: literary fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, chick lit, historical, dystopian, nonfiction, memoir. I've even read Westerns. I prefer female protagonists.
Sandra Cisneros
#68. [Dennis Mathis] was very sensitive about keeping the unique way that I spoke English - it had a lot of Mexicanisms or Mexican syntax. So you keep it in because it's adding something unique.
Sandra Cisneros
#69. I'm afraid I'm still trying to find that balance. Especially now that everyone wants a piece of me. I find that I have to become more and more reclusive, and pick and choose when I am public and when I am private.
Sandra Cisneros
#70. I know there are a lot of women who are afraid of driving on highways.
Sandra Cisneros
#71. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate
Sandra Cisneros
#72. My weapon has always been language, and I've always used it, but it has changed. Instead of shaping the words like knives now, I think they're flowers, or bridges.
Sandra Cisneros
#73. You can try reading books that will help you be a leader, like Marshall Rosenberg and Thich Nhat Hanh. Be very humble and say, "I don't know why. I don't feel qualified, but I accept this role that you gave me, and so help me."
Sandra Cisneros
#74. One way to get very humble is to dedicate the work you're going to do to your community.
Sandra Cisneros
#75. The ability to be present with every single person and engage was a great model for me of the work that a writer needs to do. Writers, living or dead, still guide me in many ways.
Sandra Cisneros
#76. I like to think about the bestseller list as, "This is the medicine cabinet of a very sick country." Let me look and see what they're reading that isn't nourishing them.
Sandra Cisneros
#77. I have this great fear of Mexico City. I won't go to Mexico City unless someone meets me at the airport and is with me. I just feel very vulnerable there.
Sandra Cisneros
#78. You don't want somebody who doesn't know his own heart, do you? You'll find someone who's brave enough to love you. Someday. One day. Not today.
Sandra Cisneros
#79. The world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning.
Sandra Cisneros
#81. If you know two cultures and two languages, that intermediate place, where the two don't perfectly meet, is really interesting.
Sandra Cisneros
#82. It's what's available to the poor communities. They do buy healthy stuff, you know, but the lettuce is usually iceberg lettuce and to get any taste, they have to use all that ranch dressing.
Sandra Cisneros
#83. To this day, on my cheat days from my diet, which are New Year's Eve and my birthday, I buy luxury foods that are very indicative of my class.
Sandra Cisneros
#84. There's a lot of people that need these stories, and they can't come to my book, so I'm going to be the bookmobile and I'm going to come to them.
Sandra Cisneros
#85. Even if you don't believe in God, you have to believe in love.
Sandra Cisneros
#86. I lose things. I write things and they disappear from my desk, my life. I move a lot. I wanted to gather them and put them under one roof, under one cover, so I could document my life in a series of snapshots.
Sandra Cisneros
#87. I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet.
Sandra Cisneros
#88. I have to understand what my strengths and limitations are, and work from a true place. I try to do this as best I can while still protecting my writer self, which more than ever needs privacy.
Sandra Cisneros
#89. Perhaps the greatest challenge has been trying to keep my time to myself and my private life private in order to do my job. Everything that is most mine belongs to everyone now.
Sandra Cisneros
#90. Think about the books that you were reading at a certain crisis in your life, what you were reading, and that's because you needed them to nourish your alma.
Sandra Cisneros
#91. Being on a highway, all that speed and aggression, is very terrifying to me.
Sandra Cisneros
#92. We can have our hearts broken over so much more. It is important to recognize the full spectrum of heartbreak. We can be heartbroken by lost and by disappointment. But heartbreak is not just this negative image we see, it's not this terrible experience that brings no benefits.
Sandra Cisneros
#93. My trainer taught me, because he's Iranian, and that's a beautiful snack [pistachios]. I have some with me, actually, in my bag. You could eat that on a plane instead of the salted nuts. And a serving size a day is the size of your hand, not the size of your head!
Sandra Cisneros
#94. If you're poor, potato chips are the food of life for you. It's the caviar.
Sandra Cisneros
#95. I've put up with too much, too long, and now I'm just too intelligent, too powerful, too beautiful, too sure of who I am finally to deserve anything less.
Sandra Cisneros
#96. I think my family and closest friends are learning about my need to withdraw, and I am learning how to restore and store my energy to both serve the community to the best of my ability and to serve my writer's heart.
Sandra Cisneros
#97. [Courage] always bigger than what you think you can handle, but you're never going to be given something you can't handle. So you say, "Okay, when you tell me what it is that I'm supposed to do, please give me the courage to do it."
Sandra Cisneros
#98. The stories are what no one wants to talk about. So you make up a story because no one is going to tell you the truth.
Sandra Cisneros
#99. 'Hispanic' is English for a person of Latino origin who wants to be accepted by the white status quo. 'Latino' is the word we have always used for ourselves.
Sandra Cisneros
#100. Sometimes hearing the stories is going to change people's lives much more than if they read it.
Sandra Cisneros
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