Sandra Cisneros Quotes
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When you become a driver, they don't tell you that you have to switch languages. The drivers have their own language and they don't tell you that as girls. How am I supposed to know that blinking light means something? There are all these little languages that you have to know, but you don't know.
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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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Being on a highway, all that speed and aggression, is very terrifying to me.
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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.
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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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To me, the Virgen de Guadalupe is just a vessel for me to recognize my own God within myself.
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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.
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There's no perfect place, there's no wonderful utopia.
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I think that you need to have books that talk about the lives of the poor, and they need to be involved - involved in acquisitions.
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I believe love is always eternal. Even if eternity is only five minutes.
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I think people should read fairy tales, because were hungry for a mythology that will speak to our fears.
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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.
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A second person that's come to my life very recently, and I'm thankful for it, is Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of the Nonviolent Communication Organization. He has all these books about how we can use our language nonviolently to help create peace. He's using a lot of Buddhism too, but he's helping me to think about language.
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Many books that you read, they have those disclaimers that say that, "None of the events and none of the people are based on real life" and so on... Well, I don't believe that. I think that as human beings many people touch us, especially people we love the most and we can't help but do character sketches when we go to our art.
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If you can't fall asleep, learn how to meditate. I would recommend you listen to a beautiful tape called Spiritual Power, Spiritual Practice Energy Evaluation Meditations For Morning and Evening, 1998. It was the one that got me out of my writer's block when I was writing Caramelo. It's by Carolyn Myss.
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I think one of the great primordial fears we have once we become conscious of our aloneness as children is the fear of losing our mother. We have that from the moment we realize we can lose her just in the supermarket. As a child, it was more terrifying than arithmetic.
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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!
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I learned from the Macarturos. I had never been at a table with a labor organizer and a playwright and a performance artist and an anthropologist and a human rights lawyer. Usually at most gatherings, it's all writers. But suddenly I was at a table with all these different people and I learned from each of them, learned from the work they're doing, learned new ways to solve my problems.
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I think the erotic is very spiritual, and I never see that spiritual dimension when you look at collections of erotica. That's always missing for me.
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I was interested in cross-pollinating the two. I thought there was something lovely in the little vignette forms. I wanted to explore that.
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The more you speak more languages, the more you understand about yourself. It's like being blind. You aren't less of a person, but you're missing out on wonderful things.
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When I was very young I was reading a lot of Latin American fiction, which later would be called "boom fiction."
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I usually say Latina, Mexican-American or American Mexican, and in certain contexts, Chicana, depending on whether my audience understands the term or not.
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The thoughts of letting go of everything I love overwhelms like a tsunami of sorrow.