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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 -
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
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The good thing about Dennis Mathis is, even though he's a white, he respected that I was doing something quirky with my English. He loved it when I would mix up the Americanisms and say, "That's water over the dam."
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 -
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 -
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've been on television saying, "¡Vamos a la biblioteca!". That was great. Nobody had ever asked me.
Sandra Cisneros -
When I say what I'm reading, this is what I need. I know the ills that plague me.
Sandra Cisneros
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You have to remember that writing itself is so solitary. You start writing because you're lonely.
Sandra Cisneros -
I feel like I am in a box of bees when I am in a room with lots of people and I'm just looking for the door. I find myself getting more and more agoraphobic as time goes on.
Sandra Cisneros -
The border between the dead and the living, if you're Mexican, doesn't exist. The dead are part of your life.
Sandra Cisneros -
When your writing is unselfconscious, when it comes from your heart, that's when it's powerful.
Sandra Cisneros -
I would drive on streets that were one-way and think, "Why are they all honking at me?"
Sandra Cisneros -
As Indigenous peoples, we know there is more to the world. We know spirits exist. We know as women, because we're especially attuned to this kind of knowledge, that spirits exist and have a presence in our lives. Some of us are gifted and can communicate with the spirit world. Not everyone has that gift and can perceive the borders between the living and the dead and our society actively discourages us of exploring the knowledge of what many of us have already always known in our cultures.
Sandra Cisneros
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When you have a flourishing of the economy you have a flourishing of the arts.
Sandra Cisneros -
Mexico is only a memory of childhood safety.
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 -
Catholicism believes in the Virgen de Guadalupe. The mother of God is worshipped, especially in Latin America. I find her very empowering. I find that the Virgen de Guadalupe allowed me to return to parts of my upbringing I had disregarded.
Sandra Cisneros -
You'll change. You'll see. Wait till you meet Mr. Right.
Sandra Cisneros -
Spanish is a poetic language, in particular the Spanish of Mexico which has a wonderful animistic attitude you might not see in the Spanish of the peninsula. I think it has to do with the indigenous way of looking at nature.
Sandra Cisneros
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We started an organization that's the only sub-organization of the MacArthur Foundation and we are called the Macarturos. Usually when I win something, I'm the only one of my ethnicity to get it, but this time I met all these Latinos, and I was so excited. I'd meet someone and I'd go, "Can you come to San Antonio?" And they'd go, "Oh yeah." And suddenly I had twelve people that said they would come. And I didn't know how it was going to be. And that's how the Macarturos became a reality, where these very generous geniuses come to San Antonio and work together.
Sandra Cisneros -
Everything that I write comes when it wants to, out of its own need and it dictates its form. I don't say, "I am going to write a novel."
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 -
I am not in touch with other writers. I don't have very much contact with other writers. I don't get invited to these things or I don't go to them. I hate panels. I speak to librarians and to conferences of English teachers. That's what I do: teachers and librarians. And high school kids.
Sandra Cisneros