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One of the books that has guided me in the last ten years of my life to help me to be that leader is the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh's Being Peace. He's a Vietnamese monk. He was nominated for a Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King. -- Sandra Cisneros
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[Courage] always bigger than what you think you can handle, but you're never going to be given something you can't handle. So you say, "Okay, when you tell me what it is that I'm supposed to do, please give me the courage to do it." -- Sandra Cisneros
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Writing is like sewing together what I call these 'buttons,' these bits and pieces. -- Sandra Cisneros
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When I say what I'm reading, this is what I need. I know the ills that plague me. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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! -- Sandra Cisneros
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The more you speak more languages, the more you understand about yourself. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Revenge only engenders violence, not clarity and true peace. I think liberation must come from within. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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To tell you the truth, I think it's about that we shouldn't get our driver's licenses till real late in life. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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There's all kinds of ways to wean yourself off of sugar - because it is like an addiction. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I've always read broadly: literary fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, chick lit, historical, dystopian, nonfiction, memoir. I've even read Westerns. I prefer female protagonists. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Every writer I admire is my teacher. If you look at it, and if you care to read carefully enough and to read and reread a text, you teach yourself something about craft. -- Sandra Cisneros
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You can try reading books that will help you be a leader, like Marshall Rosenberg and Thich Nhat Hanh. Be very humble and say, "I don't know why. I don't feel qualified, but I accept this role that you gave me, and so help me." -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Well, I'm Buddhist, Ray, and so part of my Buddhism has allowed me to look a little more deeply at people and the events in my life that created me. And I think a lot of that Buddhism comes out in the world view in this novel. -- Sandra Cisneros
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The older you get, the more power you have with language as a writer, which means that you have to be extra responsible for what you say, whether it's in print or in front of a microphone, because those words can go out and kill or go out and plant seeds for peace. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I learned when I was a student in Connecticut. I had an Italian-American teacher who gave me classes for a week, and then said, "Okay, you're ready." And I wasn't ready. I didn't know how to drive!. But he knew the policeman who gave the test. And that's how I got through. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I was reading Carl Sandburg and Gwendolyn Brooks, and I'm still very, very deeply moved by Gwendolyn Brooks's life and her work. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I'm most tired after I read, after I've just done a performance, but what I try to do is to fuel and eat a really healthy meal before I perform. I want to have enough energy to talk to that last person. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I grew up listening to the Beatles and being an ardent Beatles fan when I was in third grade all the way to adulthood, and listening to all kinds of music that came to us either at the flea market or in our living rooms or on the 'Ed Sullivan' show - all these places we were influenced by. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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My father always defined my gender to my brothers. He'd say, 'This is your sister; you must take care of her.' -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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It's so good for your health to take those naps. I don't know why people brag that they sleep five hours. I'd be ashamed. I'm proud that I sleep nine hours. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I was a little press writer when the National Endowment for the Arts came to my rescue and gave me an award. I couldn't buy a light bulb. Almost more than the money, the awards are important because they show that someone believes in you. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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In my youth, daydreaming nurtured me, provided a safe haven. I'd sleep for twelve hours and even when awake escape to the safe place in my mind. -- Sandra Cisneros
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You have to remember that writing itself is so solitary. You start writing because you're lonely. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I do travel a lot, because I need oxygen, I need to go to places to meet people who aren't upset at me because I'm asking for peace. -- Sandra Cisneros
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You don't want somebody who doesn't know his own heart, do you? You'll find someone who's brave enough to love you. Someday. One day. Not today. -- Sandra Cisneros
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The beauty of literature is you allow readers to see things through other peoples eyes. All good books do this. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I have to get my will in order. I have to get the Macondo Foundation going. I want to invest the money and resources that I've gotten from working so hard so that it's shared and it has its life beyond me. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Those of us who are writers and have to perform to communities that aren't used to coming to book events, I would recommend taking some theater. -- Sandra Cisneros
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The TSA tears through your bags at the airport and the NSA watches what books you buy and what you say over the telephone and online. It doesn't feel like anything is private anymore. -- Sandra Cisneros
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The border between the dead and the living, if you're Mexican, doesn't exist. The dead are part of your life. Like my dad, who's not here, but he's here.That's why there's the Day of the Dead. There's such a connection with the dead. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I'm a witch woman
high on tobacco and holy water. I'm a woman delighted with her disasters. They give me something to do. A profession of sorts ... I have the magic of words. The power to charm and kill at will. -- Sandra Cisneros
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The ideal for me is to mix it up. When I have a writing workshop, I like to have people that are anthropologists and people who are poking around in other fields, I like to have them all in the same workshop, and not worry about genre. -- Sandra Cisneros
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The comments you'll get from a filmmaker about your performance are going to be very different. My writing workshop is about mixing it up, cross-pollinating, not only in genres but in occupations. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I don't want to blame anybody, but I just want to tell you that the process of writing is antisocial, so on the days that you have something really important to write, go from lying down directly to your notepad or your computer. Do not talk. -- Sandra Cisneros
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One press account said I was an overnight success. I thought that was the longest night I've ever spent. -- Sandra Cisneros
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My weapon has always been language, and I've always used it, but it has changed. Instead of shaping the words like knives now, I think they're flowers, or bridges. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I wasn't aware that 'House on Mango Street' was so influenced by Spanish until after I finished. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Sometimes I feel I can't quite master my written and spoken Spanish, because I'm too much a student of English. I would need another lifetime to learn it. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate -- Sandra Cisneros
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I know the books that I need to help me to be wiser than my years and be kinder and more compassionate and more patient than I really am. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Why don't we have people like Thich Nhat Hanh or Marshall Rosenberg and Nelson Mandela solving violent situations in a peaceful way? -- Sandra Cisneros
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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! -- Sandra Cisneros
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I am obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in her skin. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I don't just want to talk to the choir. I want to sit down and be respectful of the people who are most unlike me, to get them to hear me and think. It doesn't mean you're going to change them right there, but just so they can hear you and what you're saying. -- Sandra Cisneros
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The house was immaculate, as always, not a stray hair anywhere, not a flake of dandruff or a crumpled towel. Even the roses on the dining-room table held their breath. A kind of airless cleanliness that always made me want to sneeze. -- Sandra Cisneros
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By community I mean that community you have a special vision for, that only you see, that no one else in a room sees. That special community in pain, that through a pain you've suffered, you're able to have that vision, that super-ray vision. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Write about what makes you different. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I didn't intend to be writing - the writer's life. I was just writing what came to me at the time, but it is a map of how this writer had to break many barriers to find, not a room of her own, but a house of her own. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I have to understand what my strengths and limitations are, and work from a true place. I try to do this as best I can while still protecting my writer self, which more than ever needs privacy. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I lose things. I write things and they disappear from my desk, my life. I move a lot. I wanted to gather them and put them under one roof, under one cover, so I could document my life in a series of snapshots. -- Sandra Cisneros
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When I'm starting to feel, "How many more people are there?" I go slower. I ask questions, and that person engaging with me gives me energy. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I have this great fear of Mexico City. I won't go to Mexico City unless someone meets me at the airport and is with me. I just feel very vulnerable there. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Mexico is only a memory of childhood safety. -- Sandra Cisneros
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My idea of a meal, if I was hungry, was to open a bag of potato chips. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I had to learn quick, because I was performing in Cinco de Mayo festivals with babies crying and people lifting their beers, and you know the feather dancers would come, and they'd say, "What are you, a poet? You're next". -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I spent my thirties living out of boxes and moving every six months to a year. It was my cloud period: I just wandered like a cloud for ten years, following the food supply. I was a hunter, gatherer, an academic migrant. -- Sandra Cisneros
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If you're poor, potato chips are the food of life for you. It's the caviar. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I'm just as unhappy about San Antonio as I was about Chicago. If you're unhappy about certain things, you're unhappy everywhere. -- Sandra Cisneros
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San Antonio drives me crazy, but Chicago drives me crazy in a different way. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I live in a town that's two and a half hours from the border. I know people who have lived in San Antonio for generations, sometimes seven generations, their families are from there, and they are of Mexican descent, and they've never gone farther than the border. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Books are medicine and you have to take the right medicine that you need at that moment or that day or that time in your life. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Every book changes my writing because I'm always trying to do something I didn't do before. I try to do what's hard for me, what I haven't done in the past. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I also learned to tell a story. I think I learned from poetry how to time a story. Poetry's timing, beats and pauses. That white space on the page is as important as the black. The bottom of the page is blackout. It's performance. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Now I feel life is really short and I have to take care of things. -- Sandra Cisneros
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You know, you want to be outrageous when you're young, so all the young people say, "Oooh ... " Now my tactics are different. -- Sandra Cisneros
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There's a lot of things that haven't been communicated to our communities. I didn't know these things myself. I didn't know that if you ate cheap food, it was like buying cheap gasoline, and there was a reason why after an hour you get headaches, or youhypoglycemic. -- Sandra Cisneros
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The thoughts of letting go of everything I love overwhelms like a tsunami of sorrow. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Like all guests, after a fortnight, grief is best beyond the door. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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 who's busy and has too many children, like my mother. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog. -- Sandra Cisneros
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How can art make a difference in the world? -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I wish somebody had told me love does not die, that we can continue to receive and give love after death. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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 ... " -- Sandra Cisneros
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I liked the books I read that said things like 'I shan't'. I would try to find a way to say in my life, to reply, 'I shan't do that, mother.' That was so far away from my barrio world. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I think that we need to measure how we give dollars to libraries by need. And the communities that are poor, in my opinion, should get more because you have to do more outreach. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Marshall Rosenberg talks about how we can create peace in the communities we work with. He's been traveling to warring nations to create peace within those countries. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Even if you don't believe in God, you have to believe in love. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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One way to get very humble is to dedicate the work you're going to do to your community. -- Sandra Cisneros
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My Spanish is a daughter's Spanish. I write, but my Spanish really is very limited. -- Sandra Cisneros
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You'll change. You'll see. Wait till you meet Mr. Right. -- Sandra Cisneros
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The ego's blocking the light from coming. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I'm from Chicago, so the Chicago working-class poets still mean a great deal to me. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I think of reading as like a medicine cabinet. -- Sandra Cisneros
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The ability to be present with every single person and engage was a great model for me of the work that a writer needs to do. Writers, living or dead, still guide me in many ways. -- Sandra Cisneros
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One of the things I like to pack, that I take with me all the time, is my Virgensita de Guadalupe. It doesn't take much room in your suitcase. If you have one that isn't so fancy, you can use it on the plane when you're scared. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I realize that when I moved out of my father's house I shocked and frightened him because I needed a room of my own, a space of my own to reinvent myself. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I like to think about the bestseller list as, "This is the medicine cabinet of a very sick country." Let me look and see what they're reading that isn't nourishing them. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Mexicans don't think of ghosts as haunting you. -- Sandra Cisneros
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When we started publishing, you had to be better than good. You had to be excellent. But as long as people are reading, I don't care what they're reading. -- Sandra Cisneros
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So how are you supposed to learn how to drive with this guy yapping at you? My brothers were the ones who got to practice. So when you have to get on the expressway, you're afraid. That's what I think. That's why I take back routes on two-lane highways. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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My feminism is humanism, with the weakest being those who I represent, and that includes many beings and life forms, including some men. -- Sandra Cisneros
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We have all this courage as writers, but then there's this fear. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I think there's some great stuff coming. I do feel that. I think we have reached our Harlem Renaissance. -- Sandra Cisneros
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If you know two cultures and two languages, that intermediate place, where the two don't perfectly meet, is really interesting. -- Sandra Cisneros
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There are a few of the authors that I think have made a great big impact on my life. The way I used to do things when I was younger was more about being outrageous, and there was a lot of ego involved in that. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Even my mom. I have to tell her, "If you want a snack, don't go to bed with potato chips. Eat a handful of pistachios and a handful of dates." -- Sandra Cisneros
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What do we call our Harlem Renaissance? Maybe in the future, it won't be just Latino, maybe it'll be more multi-multi, because, you know, people are such fusions now, of so many different cultures. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I don't see any kind of mirror of power, male power, that is, as a form of liberation. I don't believe in an eye for an eye. I don't believe this is truly freedom. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I was reading all these male writers who were doing wild and wonderful things. It gave me permission to experiment. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I thought that strange syntax was the language of story books. I didn't realize those were poor translations ... English from Edwardian times. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I would drive on streets that were one-way and think, "Why are they all honking at me?" -- Sandra Cisneros
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I think diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone. -- Sandra Cisneros
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The devil knows more from experience than from being the devil -- Sandra Cisneros
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Writing poetry helps me to write my fiction; each thing helps the other. -- Sandra Cisneros
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In English, my name means hope. In Spanish, it means too many letters. It means sadness. It means waiting. It is like the number nine, a muddy color. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I felt a failure because I couldn't sustain myself from what I earned from my writing. My day jobs were what mattered, and it was hard to even get those because universities wouldn't hire me as a real writer. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I can't stand it when people say, "If you're writing a novel, you should read this and that." Because it's like giving someone another person's prescription. How do you know that's what they need? -- Sandra Cisneros
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I find myself using Spanish words much more now that I'm older, and I guess I have the authority to do it in public spaces in ways that I felt I couldn't when I was teaching here fifteen years ago. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I feel that I can teach my listener about a new word they can use too. -- Sandra Cisneros
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[Jorge Luis Borges] had short stories, and I was trying to learn how to write short stories, and then he had these things in the middle that were like fables, and I loved hearing fables. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I never paid attention when people said, "That's gotta be poetry. That's gotta be fiction," except when I was in a graduate program, and you had to claim your genre. -- Sandra Cisneros
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One of my favorite writers is Hans Christian Anderson. His stories speak to the times. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I remember when they started publishing Latino fiction years ago. You had to be really good to get published. Now you don't have to be that good. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I usually meditate and I call my spirit allies - anyone in the spirit world that I've got connections with. Even in the spirit world you need connections! -- Sandra Cisneros
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"You're next, after the feather dancers." And you had to get their attention, because otherwise people would go, "Oh, a poet." You really have to learn. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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[Dennis Mathis] was very sensitive about keeping the unique way that I spoke English - it had a lot of Mexicanisms or Mexican syntax. So you keep it in because it's adding something unique. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I'm afraid I'm still trying to find that balance. Especially now that everyone wants a piece of me. I find that I have to become more and more reclusive, and pick and choose when I am public and when I am private. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I know there are a lot of women who are afraid of driving on highways. -- Sandra Cisneros
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The world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I began writing as an experimental writer. -- Sandra Cisneros
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It's what's available to the poor communities. They do buy healthy stuff, you know, but the lettuce is usually iceberg lettuce and to get any taste, they have to use all that ranch dressing. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Being on a highway, all that speed and aggression, is very terrifying to me. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I've put up with too much, too long, and now I'm just too intelligent, too powerful, too beautiful, too sure of who I am finally to deserve anything less. -- Sandra Cisneros
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The stories are what no one wants to talk about. So you make up a story because no one is going to tell you the truth. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Sometimes hearing the stories is going to change people's lives much more than if they read it. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Heartbreak makes us stronger; it's an opportunity for spiritual growth. How can you understand someone else's pain if you have not yourself suffered? -- Sandra Cisneros
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I had no concept of this [healthy food] until very, very late in life, thanks to a trainer/nutritionist that I met who has been working with me since I was forty-five. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I have to say my favorite stories are ghost stories. I don't like to see these made-up monster films or scary films with ghosts. It doesn't do anything to me. But a real ghost story that someone tells me, that I like. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Packing is important because a lot of times I have to go places where I have to be in four different climates in three weeks. For example, Bosnia, Ireland, Rome. Different parts of Italy. You have to pack and get it down to a science. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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." -- Sandra Cisneros
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The good thing about Dennis [ Mathis] is, even though he's a white, he respected that I was doing something quirky with my English. He loved it when I would mix up the Americanisms and say, "That's water over the dam." -- Sandra Cisneros
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You can never have too much sky. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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You get good at being by yourself and you're condemned to a life sentence of solitude. You think, "Wait a minute! I should have been a tap dancer or something". But in my life, I feel like I take my stories to people orally. -- Sandra Cisneros
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And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out. -- Sandra Cisneros
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But I deal with this meditating and by understanding I've been put on the planet to serve humanity. I have to remind myself to live simply and not to overindulge, which is a constant battle in a material world. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I look at Thich Nhat Hanh and I look at Marshall Rosenberg, and they're more concerned about the long range. And that long range means that you have to sit down with people who don't think like you. I want to reach people who don't think like me. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I think people should read fairy tales, because we're hungry for a mythology that will speak to our fears. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Believe it or not, Mexican cooking, for those of you who have not gone farther south than Taco Bell, uses a lot of vegetables. But those vegetables were not brought here, like corn mushrooms, huitlacoche, or squash blossoms. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I don't really think our government at heart wants peace. So I urge you, write to Mrs. Laura Bush, because she reads. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I think I didn't know what I was creating, as much as I knew what I didn't want to do. And I didn't want my mother's life. She was an unhappy, frustrated artist who always dreamed of a life that was never going to be hers. -- Sandra Cisneros
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In the business world, I did fairly well, but wasn't happy. A bout of sciatica put me flat on my back. All I could do was read, listen to my mother's stories about the Sandovals, and daydream: a return to self. My writing career had begun. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Afterwards, people come and say, "I felt like you said that just to me. What you said is something I'm going through right now," so you know that spiritual connection is going on. -- Sandra Cisneros
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There are many Latino writers as talented as I am, but because we are published through small presses, our books don't count. We are still the illegal aliens of the literary world. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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? -- Sandra Cisneros
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The most powerful speaking you can do is the speaking that comes from your heart and your love. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Generally if you're a daughter in a Mexican family, no one wants to tell you anything; they tell you the healthy lies about your family. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I believe love is always eternal. Even if eternity is only five minutes. -- Sandra Cisneros
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For a writer, for the solitude to write, you don't need a room of your own, you need a house. -- Sandra Cisneros
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You know, we should have cards like the deaf have. "Can't talk, I'm writing today." -- Sandra Cisneros
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I don't like to go into subways, because I always see them [ mice]. They are like my naguales [kindred animal spirits]. They follow me. I have literally stepped off of a plane in Phoenix and gotten my bag and stepped out on the curb and they'll be a big desert rat walking right in front of me. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Instead of putting cheese with ranchero sauce, chile is really very good for you. If you put that in, you get flavoring, so you're not eating bland food, especially if you're used to spicy food. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I feel the fear touches on something deeper. A sense perhaps of, "My life is speeding past me and I can't get a handle on it." -- Sandra Cisneros
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Even though it's hard to believe, but people who know me really well know I'm shy. I have to go past that fear. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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That's what you need for your writing - to learn how to be present, learn how to be calm. So take that nap, do that meditation. -- Sandra Cisneros
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When your writing is unselfconscious, when it comes from your heart, that's when it's powerful. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I grew up with this kind of grocery store that caters to the poor. They serve you the worst food -- Sandra Cisneros
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You want to be able to say anything when you do your first draft, because some of that goofy stuff that you think has nothing to do with it is probably where the mother lode is. -- Sandra Cisneros
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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. -- Sandra Cisneros
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For me, a story's a story if people want to hear it; it's very much based on oral storytelling. And for me, a story is a story when people give me the privilege of listening when I'm speaking it out loud. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I was very lucky. I don't know German, or Dutch, or Chinese, or Thai. I don't know them, so I can't judge, so I have to go on the word of the publisher that it's a good translation. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I think that Mexican-American kids live in a global world. It's not even bi-, it's multi-. You know, for those of us who grew up with different countries on our block, different nationalities, you know, we moved into multiple worlds. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Maybe all pain in the world requires poetry. -- Sandra Cisneros
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You know how they say, "Find your voice"? That's your voice, in your pajamas. And it doesn't mean that you're going to publish it or print it or people are going to see you in your pajamas. It just means you are going to construct the foundation in your pajamas, in that voice. -- Sandra Cisneros
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When I was writing Caramelo the last couple of years, a sixty-hour work week was normal. And now I'm lucky if I have eight hours. -- Sandra Cisneros
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All of my work is influenced by fairy tales, and I hope my work shows Hans Christian Anderson's influence. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Believe me, that nap is better than sitting there for three hours and nothing's coming. I've learned that even if I've slept nine hours and I just finished breakfast, if I feel sleepy when I'm in front of that computer, I'll take a nap. And it really does help. -- Sandra Cisneros
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You were given that pain and that vision because you have something to do with it. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Even if we don't know if God exists, we can be certain love exists, because its power transcends death. -- Sandra Cisneros
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You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are. -- Sandra Cisneros
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What's always a challenge for me is that my Spanish is not the level of my English. Nor do I read in Spanish the way I read in English. -- Sandra Cisneros
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Some people need flowers, some people need dandelions. It's medicine, it's what you need at that time in your life. -- Sandra Cisneros
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That's why it's important to be multilingual, because it teaches you so much about your own language. -- Sandra Cisneros
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I'm filled with a new joy mixed with old grief. -- Sandra Cisneros