Sandra Cisneros Quotes
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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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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.
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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 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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As people who are women, who are Indigenous and live on Indigenous lands, we know, and this is something I understand the older I get, that they don't visit the same way the postman may visit but they do visit. They visit in ways that our modern society often disregards and considers immaterial or unreal.
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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 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.
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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.
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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.
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I was raised in Chicago, so always used Latina. It's what my Father and brothers called ourselves, when we meant the entire Spanish-speaking community of Chicago.
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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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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.
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I feel comfortable in Spanish, I chat like a parrot, but I don't have the confidence in Spanish that I do in English.
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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.
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When you have your heart broken wide, you are also open to things of beauty as well as things of sadness. Once people are not here physically, the spiritual remains, we still connect, we can communicate, we can give and receive love and forgiveness. There is love after someone dies.
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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.
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Being on a highway, all that speed and aggression, is very terrifying to me.
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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.
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I can't go to Hindu countries where they respect rats and mice, and I can't go camping. I don't like to go into subways, because I always see them. Rats are like my naguales kindred animal spirits. They follow me.
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I learn through listening and watching other performers that are very good, like Denise Chávez, Dorothy Allison.
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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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I want to write an essay called "Fear of Mexico," because I always feel like Mexico's this lover that never writes to me.
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You know how sometimes you're talking to people who love you and give you unconditional love, and you say, "But you know what? Let me back up. I forgot to say . . ."You can do that, right? You don't hesitate and say, "Oh my God! I forgot to say that!". You just speak! And you say it all, until you have nothing more to say. And that's your first draft. It's done.
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The only reason we write - well, the only reason why I write; maybe I shouldn't generalize - is so that I can find out something about myself. Writers have this narcissistic obsession about how we got to be who we are. I have to understand my ancestors - my father, his mother and her mother - to understand who I am. It all leads back to the narcissistic pleasure of discovering yourself.