Sandra Cisneros Quotes
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The truth has a strange way of following you, of coming up to you and making you listen to what it has to say.
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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.
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I can't do a linear novel. I'm just going to write what I need to write.
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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.
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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?
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One way to get very humble is to dedicate the work you're going to do to your community.
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The experience taught me to be present in the real Buddhist sense of paying attention to the moment.
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Mexico is only a memory of childhood safety.
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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.
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I'm learning a lot by reading teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron. They teach me because I feel like I have a responsibility to the communities that I speak to.
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I had a mother who walked to the library with me, and you can't walk to a lot of libraries in San Antonio because - guess what? - there are no sidewalks, except in the neighborhoods. And they're across big boulevards, and it's so hot, you can't even walk to the corner. So things like that affect how children can get to libraries. So there are a lot of things involved.
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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.
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You'll change. You'll see. Wait till you meet Mr. Right.
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San Antonio drives me crazy, but Chicago drives me crazy in a different way.
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I've been on television saying, "¡Vamos a la biblioteca!". That was great. Nobody had ever asked me.
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You have to remember that writing itself is so solitary. You start writing because you're lonely.
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Everything that is most mine belongs to everyone now.
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My friend, Dennis Mathis, was reading Eastern European and Japanese experimental writers, and I brought the Latin American writers to his attention, so we exchanged books and bounced off one another.
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When your writing is unselfconscious, when it comes from your heart, that's when it's powerful.
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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!
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What you're going to be asked to do is bigger than what you think you can do. It's always bigger than what you think you can handle, but you're never going to be given something you can't handle.
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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."
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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.
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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.