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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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Sandra Cisneros
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: December 20
Arts Administrator
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Short Story Writer
Teacher
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Woman
Power
Give
Giving
Writing
Make
Things
Latina
Distinctive

More quotes by 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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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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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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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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I am not in touch with other writers. I don't have very much contact with other writers. I don't get invited to these things or I don't go to them. I hate panels. I speak to librarians and to conferences of English teachers. That's what I do: teachers and librarians. And high school kids.
Sandra Cisneros
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I think that it's not enough to do the little Band-Aid things of having celebrities come and read to children. Not that we don't need to read to children, but we don't need to just do it one time and feel good about it. I think we need to think long range about poor people and their relationship to libraries.
Sandra Cisneros
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The devil knows more from experience than from being the devil
Sandra Cisneros
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If you have potato chips, that means, Who's coming over?Wealthy people - white people who're wealthy - have a bag of potato chips that's folded over with a clip. What? There's some left over? In my house, if there was a bag of potato chips, we'd pour it in a bowl and everybody would just dip in till it was gone.
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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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I always have to have sweet and salty. I know some of you are going to say, Oh, I tried dates. I hate them. That's probably because you had the ones that were on the shelf for three years. Go to some healthy place and get the fresh ones, and you will just love them. You'll start eating them and think they're so good.
Sandra Cisneros
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You know, if you've got nine people that you've got to get a treat for - because you do have sweet food, even if you're poor - you can't go out and buy a Sara Lee cake. You buy the big bag of cookies, those chocolate and vanilla ones with the icing. That has a lot of trans fat in it, but it goes a long way with a lot of people.
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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You know, we should have cards like the deaf have. Can't talk, I'm writing today.
Sandra Cisneros