Quote

To separate from my culture (as from my family) I had to feel competent enough on the outside and secure enough inside to live life on my own. Yet in leaving home I did not lose touch with my origins because lo mexicano is in my system. I am a turtle, wherever I go I carry 'home' on my back.

Gloria E. Anzaldúa

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Age: 61 †
Born: 1942
Born: September 26
Died: 2004
Died: May 15
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Scholar
Writer
Gloria E. Anzaldua
Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa
Life
Family
Leaving
Turtle
Culture
Roots
Turtles
Home
Touch
Origins
Back
Outside
Competent
Live
Inside
Separate
Enough
Lose
Wherever
Feel
Loses
Secure
Feels
System
Carry

More quotes by Gloria E. Anzaldúa

Image
I can't seem to stay out of my own way.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
A woman who writes has power, and a woman with power is feared.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
Though we tremble before uncertain futures may we meet illness, death and adversity with strength may we dance in the face of our fears.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
An image is a bridge between evoked emotion and conscious knowledge words are the cables that hold up the bridge. Images are more direct, more immediate than words, and closer to the unconscious. Picture language precedes thinking in words the metaphorical mind precedes analytical consciousness.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
Nothing happens in the 'real' world unless it first happens in the images in our heads
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
Living on borders and in margins, keeping intact one's shifting and multiple identity and integrity, is like trying to swim in a new element, an alien element.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
The act of writing is the act of making soul, alchemy.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
Books saved my sanity, knowledge opened the locked places in me and taught me first how to survive and then how to soar.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
But I'm more scared of not writing.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
Write with your eyes like painters, with your ears like musicians, with your feet like dancers. You are the truthsayer with quill and torch. Write with your tongues of fire. Don't let the pen banish you from yourself.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
The U.S.-Mexican border es un herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country - a border culture.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
Like all people, we perceive the version of reality that our culture communicates. Like others having or living in more than one culture, we get multiple, often opposing messages. The coming together of two self-consistent but habitually incomparable frames of reference causes un choque, a cultural collision.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
Why am I compelled to write? Because the writing saves me from this complacency I fear. Because I have no choice.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
All reaction is limited by, and dependant on, what it is reacting against.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
I am visible-see this Indian face-yet I am invisible. I both blind them with my beak nose and am their blind spot. But I exist, we exist. They'd like to think I have melted in the pot. But I haven't. We haven't.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
In trying to become 'objective,' Western culture made 'objects' of things and people when it distanced itself from them, thereby losing 'touch' with them.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
Enough of passivity and passing time while waiting for the boy friend, the girl friend, the Goddess, or the Revolution.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
To survive the Borderlands you must live sin fronteras be a crossroads.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Image
Living in a state of psychic unrest, in a Borderland, is what makes poets write and artists create.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa