Sandra Cisneros Quotes
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God made men by baking them in an oven, but he forgot about the first batch, and that's how Black people were born. And then he was so anxious about the next batch, he took them out of the oven too soon, so that's how White people were made. But the third batch he let cook until they were golden-golden-golden, and, honey, that's you and me.
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She became politically conscious thanks to Studs Terkel and the radio. She started reading all the books we brought home from college and was a great fan of Noam Chomsky. She was a real lefty and yet was not able to meet her dream of becoming an artist. She got drafted into motherhood big time - seven kids - and that wasn't the life that she had planned. So she opened the path so that I could be the artist that she wanted to be.
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Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in
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I'm not afraid to say what I'm afraid of. Does that make me fearless?
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When you're in that state of grief, any little breeze, any hello, any confrontation, any grazing of someone meeting your eyes, might cause you suddenly to burst into grief. You could be looking at a jar of peanut butter in the supermarket, and then start crying.
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'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.
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My readers are as diverse as any group you will ever see. Something that booksellers always tell me. That they are always surprised at the kind of people that come to my readings. That they are such a mix of ages and colors. It looks like people spilling out of an elevator.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 . . ."
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I am a woman, and I am a Latina. Those are the things that make my writing distinctive. Those are the things that give my writing power.
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Even if you're an agnostic or an atheist, you can create an altar, because an altar is simply paying homage to someone's life and celebrating what they did.
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You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are.
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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.
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This is the age of fear and so many of us feel afraid to speak out about what has happened to our lives in the wake of 9/11. Television promotes the world as a scary place for the United States and this justifies peeling away every element of privacy we had before. The media is monopolized so we don't even hear a lot of dissent about this new era.
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I never know what something is going to be until it emerges from the womb and you see the crown of its head and then you see it pushing its way up. So in my life if another book wants to be born it's not for me to choose.
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What I've learned is, if I have to go out and speak, the best way to get people's attention is to tell them a story, tell them a story that came from my corazón.
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The writer Denise Chávez comments on poor food and what you associate with luxury food items. In fact, she wrote a whole book called A Taco Testimony, and though the title sounds light, it's a heavy book. It's about being working class and what kind of food is available to you that's cheap.
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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.
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For example, there's no word emocionó in English, so I have to say, "You, you really emotioned me," It's more precise, even though it sounds odd. "My father emotioned me." Or "That performance really emotioned to me."
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The world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning.
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I have to say that the traditional role is kind of a myth. I think the traditional Mexican woman is a fierce woman.