Sandra Cisneros Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Sandra Cisneros.
Famous Quotes By Sandra Cisneros
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
Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in — Sandra Cisneros
What I recommend is this: after you've talked to everybody, go take a nap! Take a nap. Your body really needs to sleep. It's like washing your face. If you can't afford a three-hour nap, do a one-hour nap. If you can't afford a one-hour nap, do half an hour. If you can't afford half an hour, do fifteen minutes. — Sandra Cisneros
I tell people to write the stories that you're afraid to talk about, the stories you wish you'd forget, because those have the most power. Those are the ones that have the most strength when you give them as a testimony. — Sandra Cisneros
We need to write because so many of our stories are not being heard. Where could they be heard in this era of fear and media monopolies? Writing allows us to transform what has happened to us and to fight back against what's hurting us. While not everyone is an author, everyone is a writer and I think that the process of writing is deeply spiritual and liberatory. — Sandra Cisneros
In my youth, daydreaming nurtured me, provided a safe haven. I'd sleep for twelve hours and even when awake escape to the safe place in my mind. — Sandra Cisneros
I don't really think our government at heart wants peace. So I urge you, write to Mrs. Laura Bush, because she reads. — Sandra Cisneros
One of my favorite writers is Hans Christian Anderson. His stories speak to the times. — Sandra Cisneros
For me, a story's a story if people want to hear it; it's very much based on oral storytelling. And for me, a story is a story when people give me the privilege of listening when I'm speaking it out loud. — Sandra Cisneros
[Thich Nhat Hanh] the one that revolutionized Buddhism. Instead of being monks just engaged in meditation, it was active Buddhism. You went out and felt the ills of the community around you. Instead of retreating to a monastery, you were out in the streets working. And he's been a great help to me, just reading his book, so I don't feel helpless about what I can do about all the violence around me. — Sandra Cisneros
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
Get yourself empty in the Eastern sense. Not in the Western sense. In the Western sense when we feel empty we feel lonely, miserable, but in the Eastern sense - "I'm so empty, because I'm filled with everything, and I'm connected to everything." It's very energizing. You want that kind of emptiness, whatever you have to do to get yourself quiet. — Sandra Cisneros
I think people should read fairy tales, because we're hungry for a mythology that will speak to our fears. — Sandra Cisneros
There was a time when I used to go to Mexico every year. But then Mexico changed a lot - between 1995 and 2005, Mexico changed a lot. — Sandra Cisneros
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
One of the things Thich Nhat Hanh taught me: he says, "When you're in a hurry, go slower." That works every time, unless you're trying to catch a plane. — Sandra Cisneros
Mice and any rodentia. Guinea pigs. Even rabbits, I can't stand. Rabbits are cousins to rats. It's a class thing. If you had to grow up with rats scampering in your backyard, because the city services were cut in half and the population in your neighborhood doubled, then that also is going to mean that the flora and fauna are going to grow as well. So that's a part of it. That's why I can't go to Hindu countries where they respect rats and mice, and I can't go camping. — Sandra Cisneros
I want to write an essay called "Fear of Mexico," because I always feel like Mexico's this lover that never writes to me. — Sandra Cisneros
My feminism is humanism, with the weakest being those who I represent, and that includes many beings and life forms, including some men. — Sandra Cisneros
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
I think that Mexican-American kids live in a global world. It's not even bi-, it's multi-. You know, for those of us who grew up with different countries on our block, different nationalities, you know, we moved into multiple worlds. — Sandra Cisneros
I know the books that I need to help me to be wiser than my years and be kinder and more compassionate and more patient than I really am. — Sandra Cisneros
I remember I was very taken with a book called DreamTigers by [Jorge Luis] Borges. He was at the University of Texas, Austin, and they collected some of his writings and put them in a little collection. It's called DreamTigers in English, but it doesn't exist in Spanish. It's a little sampler. But that collection in English is what struck me, because in there he has his poems, and I was a poet as well as a fiction writer. — Sandra Cisneros
You'll change. You'll see. Wait till you meet Mr. Right. — Sandra Cisneros
Writing is like sewing together what I call these 'buttons,' these bits and pieces. — Sandra Cisneros
Mexicans don't think of ghosts as haunting you. — Sandra Cisneros
[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
And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out. — Sandra Cisneros
My book would come out in one language, then it would come out in another language, then it would come out in One City, One Read, and I was always being called away from my desk. — Sandra Cisneros
You know, we should have cards like the deaf have. "Can't talk, I'm writing today." — Sandra Cisneros
I was very lucky. I don't know German, or Dutch, or Chinese, or Thai. I don't know them, so I can't judge, so I have to go on the word of the publisher that it's a good translation. — Sandra Cisneros
I was one of those people raised by a woman who was what I call a prisoner of war. She was captured, she didn't want to be there, she was unhappy, she was banging away in the kitchen, the way that a prisoner would bang on her jail cell, you know, really unhappy. She had to cook for nine people with really little money, so she really just got burned out. So I didn't know that you could actually cook and it would be calming, pleasurable. — Sandra Cisneros
I began writing as an experimental writer. — Sandra Cisneros
I didn't marry. I didn't have children. I followed the food supply for jobs. I kept writing at night. And that kept me moving. It kept my life disruptive. It broke up many relationships. Was it worth it? Yes. — Sandra Cisneros
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
Those of us who are writers and have to perform to communities that aren't used to coming to book events, I would recommend taking some theater. — Sandra Cisneros
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
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
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
Something I always tell students is, when you're writing something, you want to write the first draft and you want it to come out easily in the beginning. If you're afraid to say what you really have to say, you stammer. You're judging yourself, you know, thinking about your listener. You're not thinking about what you're saying. And that same thing happens when you write. — Sandra Cisneros
Heartbreak allows us to also experience joy and love but you have to walk through heartbreak to even know what joy is. Heartbreak is a constant and it is even necessary. It allows us the opportunity of introspection and exploration. Those processes are what is necessary to write and engage in the arts. — Sandra Cisneros
That's what you need for your writing - to learn how to be present, learn how to be calm. So take that nap, do that meditation. — Sandra Cisneros
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
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
I was so happy when I went to Rome and I saw that the Romans eat them too, the squash blossoms. No wonder I like the Italians! — Sandra Cisneros
You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are. — Sandra Cisneros
I have to take care of the house, and the dogs, and the Macondo Board meetings, all those e-mails, the letters that are going to fans. And you've got to pay bills. These things eat up your time. You have to prepare and pack to go on that trip. Then when you come back you have to file all that stuff, answer all that mail, and that's not even washing the clothes or any of that. So it takes as many days as I've been away to come back to normal and to get quiet. — Sandra Cisneros
We have all this courage as writers, but then there's this fear. — Sandra Cisneros
Sometimes hearing the stories is going to change people's lives much more than if they read it. — Sandra Cisneros
One way to get very humble is to dedicate the work you're going to do to your community. — Sandra Cisneros
I liked the books I read that said things like 'I shan't'. I would try to find a way to say in my life, to reply, 'I shan't do that, mother.' That was so far away from my barrio world. — Sandra Cisneros
I think there's some great stuff coming. I do feel that. I think we have reached our Harlem Renaissance. — Sandra Cisneros
You want to be able to say anything when you do your first draft, because some of that goofy stuff that you think has nothing to do with it is probably where the mother lode is. — Sandra Cisneros
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
Believe it or not, Mexican cooking, for those of you who have not gone farther south than Taco Bell, uses a lot of vegetables. But those vegetables were not brought here, like corn mushrooms, huitlacoche, or squash blossoms. — Sandra Cisneros
I think of reading as like a medicine cabinet. — Sandra Cisneros
I can get by and chatter and talk and tell funny stories, make people laugh, but I don't have as many words, I don't have the vocabulary. I think if I forced myself to read in Spanish - you know, I always say I'm going to, but I lose my patience reading in Spanish, because I really do read the way a third grader does, mouthing the words. That takes a long time! — Sandra Cisneros
I am obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in her skin. — Sandra Cisneros
I don't know what the definition of a short story is, and I don't even care to answer that question. That's something somebody in academia would think about. I just want to tell a story, and if people listen, and if it stays with you, it's a story. — Sandra Cisneros
I think that we need to measure how we give dollars to libraries by need. And the communities that are poor, in my opinion, should get more because you have to do more outreach. — Sandra Cisneros
I grew up with this kind of grocery store that caters to the poor. They serve you the worst food — Sandra Cisneros
We are told by media - books, television, reality shows - that heartbreak is this terrible thing and yet we should seek it. We're told that heartbreak is all about love and we should just go after that high over and over again. We are told it is healthy to be addicted to this kind of behavior and the highs associated with love. But, that's not all what heartbreak is. — Sandra Cisneros
I'm filled with a new joy mixed with old grief. — Sandra Cisneros
Every writer I admire is my teacher. If you look at it, and if you care to read carefully enough and to read and reread a text, you teach yourself something about craft. — Sandra Cisneros
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
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
When I'm starting to feel, "How many more people are there?" I go slower. I ask questions, and that person engaging with me gives me energy. — Sandra Cisneros
The world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning. — Sandra Cisneros
I want to thank you, especially those people who are agnostic or atheist. I don't mean any offense by the things I said of the spirit world. Thank you for allowing me to speak about the spiritual, because I can't talk about my life or writing without mentioning that. — Sandra Cisneros
One of the books that has guided me in the last ten years of my life to help me to be that leader is the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh's Being Peace. He's a Vietnamese monk. He was nominated for a Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King. — Sandra Cisneros
True love in Mexico isn't between lovers; it's between a parent and a child. Mexico is a very intense culture of sons adoring their mothers, and this is why I claim that Mexican culture is matriarchal. Because the one constant, faithful, inviolable, holy love of loves - the love of your life - is not your wife or your lover; it's your mother. — Sandra Cisneros
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
You get good at being by yourself and you're condemned to a life sentence of solitude. You think, "Wait a minute! I should have been a tap dancer or something". But in my life, I feel like I take my stories to people orally. — Sandra Cisneros
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
People like to blame Mexican food, but look at what's happening globally, look at all the fast foods and products filled with trans fat. Before the Mexican Revolution, a hundred years ago, people were eating what now macrobiotics tells us to eat, corn, black beans, rice. That's what people were eating - and chile peppers. That's a healthy diet. — Sandra Cisneros
There's all kinds of ways to wean yourself off of sugar - because it is like an addiction. — Sandra Cisneros
I think a lot of education has to be involved. If they would have alternative items, so that, say, for a dollar more, you can get breakfast tacos stuffed with egg whites, and olive oil, and avocado; not guacamole, because they put the salt in it. Just ask for fresh avocado slices, and you could have that. — Sandra Cisneros
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
Even if you don't believe in God, you have to believe in love. — Sandra Cisneros
I always have to have sweet and salty. I know some of you are going to say, "Oh, I tried dates. I hate them." That's probably because you had the ones that were on the shelf for three years. Go to some healthy place and get the fresh ones, and you will just love them. You'll start eating them and think they're so good. — Sandra Cisneros
There's a lot of things that haven't been communicated to our communities. I didn't know these things myself. I didn't know that if you ate cheap food, it was like buying cheap gasoline, and there was a reason why after an hour you get headaches, or youhypoglycemic. — Sandra Cisneros
I think that it's not enough to do the little Band-Aid things of having celebrities come and read to children. Not that we don't need to read to children, but we don't need to just do it one time and feel good about it. I think we need to think long range about poor people and their relationship to libraries. — Sandra Cisneros
The beauty of literature is you allow readers to see things through other peoples eyes. All good books do this. — Sandra Cisneros
I was a terrible student. Still, I managed to get into college, but my daydreaming threatened to sabotage me. I used behavior modification to break the cycle. I started by setting an arbitrary time limit on studying: for every 15 minutes of study, I'd allow myself an hour of daydreaming. I set the alarm. — Sandra Cisneros
The TSA tears through your bags at the airport and the NSA watches what books you buy and what you say over the telephone and online. It doesn't feel like anything is private anymore. — Sandra Cisneros
One press account said I was an overnight success. I thought that was the longest night I've ever spent. — Sandra Cisneros
I've come to some balance now and calmness. If anything happened to me and I got hit by a bus - I hope this doesn't happen, but if something happened - my body of work is something I could rest on. I don't feel, "Oh God, I have to hurry up ... " — Sandra Cisneros
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
It takes a long time for women to feel it's alright to be chingona. To aspire to be a chingona! ... You are saying, 'This is my camino, this is my path and I'm gonna follow it, regardless of what culture says.' I don't think the church likes chingonas. I don't think the state likes chingonas.! And fathers definitely do not like chingonas. And boyfriends don't like chingonas. But, you know, I remain optimistic. I will meet a man who likes a chingona, one day. One day, my chingon will come. — Sandra Cisneros
If we got an educational program going, we could tell people, "Instead of butter, use avocado." That's something we eat, it has the good fat, and it has a good texture, and it tastes better. Just imagine if you substituted that. Or if we switched to olive oil, the extra virgin olive oil, we could still have our taquitos, but put a little oil on them and put them in the oven and bake them. — Sandra Cisneros
The older I get, the more I'm conscious of ways very small things can make a change in the world. Tiny little things, but the world is made up of tiny matters, isn't it? — Sandra Cisneros
I realize that it's like spices in the kitchen. I need that turmeric. I'm sorry, but cinnamon isn't going to substitute . I feel that I can teach my listener about a new word they can use too. "Well, what words are part of my own community, even if I'm monolingual, that I'm not allowing myself to use in a public sphere?" — Sandra Cisneros
I have to say that the traditional role is kind of a myth. I think the traditional Mexican woman is a fierce woman. — Sandra Cisneros
You know, if you've got nine people that you've got to get a treat for - because you do have sweet food, even if you're poor - you can't go out and buy a Sara Lee cake. You buy the big bag of cookies, those chocolate and vanilla ones with the icing. That has a lot of trans fat in it, but it goes a long way with a lot of people. — Sandra Cisneros
If you know two cultures and two languages, that intermediate place, where the two don't perfectly meet, is really interesting. — Sandra Cisneros
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
In the business world, I did fairly well, but wasn't happy. A bout of sciatica put me flat on my back. All I could do was read, listen to my mother's stories about the Sandovals, and daydream: a return to self. My writing career had begun. — Sandra Cisneros