Sandra Cisneros Quotes

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.

I'm filled with a new joy mixed with old grief.

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.

Maybe all pain in the world requires poetry.

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.

Everything that I write comes when it wants to, out of its own need and it dictates its form. I don't say, "I am going to write a novel."

I know there are a lot of women who are afraid of driving on highways.

I can't do a linear novel. I'm just going to write what I need to write.

I was reading all these male writers who were doing wild and wonderful things. It gave me permission to experiment.

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?

[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.

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.

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.

When I was very young I was reading a lot of Latin American fiction, which later would be called "boom fiction."

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.

How can art make a difference in the world?

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.

You'll change. You'll see. Wait till you meet Mr. Right.

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.

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.

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.

The experience taught me to be present in the real Buddhist sense of paying attention to the moment.

Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in

Mexico is only a memory of childhood safety.

Don't be afraid to say what you don't know, and speak for what you do know. Say, "I can't speak for all Latinas, but I can speak for me and tell you very, very honestly."

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."

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.

Even if you don't believe in God, you have to believe in love.

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.

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.

I would drive on streets that were one-way and think, "Why are they all honking at me?"

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.

The devil knows more from experience than from being the devil

You know, you want to be outrageous when you're young, so all the young people say, "Oooh . . ." Now my tactics are different.

Everything that is most mine belongs to everyone now.

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.

I'm not afraid to say what I'm afraid of. Does that make me fearless?

I think no matter what you do you can't please everybody. You have to ask yourself, "Did I do what I set out to do?"

The ego's blocking the light from coming.

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.

We changed it to emocionó, the way you say in Spanish, "to emotion me" [to be moved]. That, as opposed to "haunt." We wanted the feeling of sadness and grief and obsession, so we used emocionó.

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!

If you're going to write about the river, you've got to get in.

You have to remember that writing itself is so solitary. You start writing because you're lonely.

I feel like I am in a box of bees when I am in a room with lots of people and I'm just looking for the door. I find myself getting more and more agoraphobic as time goes on.

Now I feel life is really short and I have to take care of things.

You don't have to be the specialist on everything. You can try to inform yourself.

If you're poor, potato chips are the food of life for you. It's the caviar.

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.

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.