Sandra Cisneros Quotes
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When I lost my father, I thought I learned about grief and transition. However, nobody tells you what it's like to lose your mother. They don't tell you that you're going to feel like an orphan at whatever age you are as an adult.
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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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One of the things Thich Nhat Hanh taught me: he says, "When you're in a hurry, go slower." That works every time, unless you're trying to catch a plane.
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I want to thank you, especially those people who are agnostic or atheist. I don't mean any offense by the things I said of the spirit world. Thank you for allowing me to speak about the spiritual, because I can't talk about my life or writing without mentioning that.
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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.
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I was silent as a child, and silenced as a young woman; I am taking my lumps and bumps for being a big mouth, now, but usually from those whose opinion I don't respect.
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If you live in poor neighborhoods - I know from living in several poor neighborhoods - the worst supermarkets in the city are in the poorest neighborhoods, where people don't have cars.
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Each book gets harder, each book gets harder and harder. I always feel like crying when I have to write.
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I wanted to write something in a voice that was unique to who I was. And I wanted something that was accessible to the person who works at Dunkin Donuts or who drives a bus, someone who comes home with their feet hurting like my father, someone whos busy and has too many children, like my mother.
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There are two things you need to ask for, to open up that channel, so you get the light. One is humility, because our ego is always going to block that guidance, and so you ask for humility.And the second thing you're going to ask for is courage, because what you're going to be asked to do is bigger than what you think you can do.
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I grew up with this kind of grocery store that caters to the poor. They serve you the worst food.
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I didn't marry. I didn't have children. I followed the food supply for jobs. I kept writing at night. And that kept me moving. It kept my life disruptive. It broke up many relationships. Was it worth it? Yes.
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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 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 know there are a lot of women who are afraid of driving on highways.
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I can get by and chatter and talk and tell funny stories, make people laugh, but I don't have as many words, I don't have the vocabulary. I think if I forced myself to read in Spanish - you know, I always say I'm going to, but I lose my patience reading in Spanish, because I really do read the way a third grader does, mouthing the words. That takes a long time!
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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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But I deal with this by meditating and by understanding I've been put on the planet to serve humanity. I have to remind myself to live simply and not overindulge, which is a constant battle in a material world.
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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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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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Maybe all pain in the world requires poetry.
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When I was a child, I was very shy, and there's still a part of me that's very shy.
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There was a time when I used to go to Mexico every year. But then Mexico changed a lot - between 1995 and 2005, Mexico changed a lot.