Quote

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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Sandra Cisneros
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: December 20
Arts Administrator
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Short Story Writer
Teacher
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Something
Holy
Delighted
High
Witch
Water
Sorts
Words
Charm
Woman
Disaster
Power
Profession
Give
Kill
Disasters
Giving
Magic
Tobacco

More quotes by Sandra Cisneros

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I never know what something is going to be until it emerges from the womb and you see the crown of its head and then you see it pushing its way up. So in my life if another book wants to be born it's not for me to choose.
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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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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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.
Sandra Cisneros
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We women shouldn't get our driver's licenses till real late in life.
Sandra Cisneros
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Every book takes you to the terror, that terrible place of possible failure.
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 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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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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As people who are women, who are Indigenous and live on Indigenous lands, we know, and this is something I understand the older I get, that they don't visit the same way the postman may visit but they do visit. They visit in ways that our modern society often disregards and considers immaterial or unreal.
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 you become a driver, they don't tell you that you have to switch languages. The drivers have their own language and they don't tell you that as girls. How am I supposed to know that blinking light means something? There are all these little languages that you have to know, but you don't know.
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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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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Even if you're an agnostic or an atheist, you can create an altar, because an altar is simply paying homage to someone's life and celebrating what they did.
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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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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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 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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Catholicism believes in the Virgen de Guadalupe. The mother of God is worshipped, especially in Latin America. I find her very empowering. I find that the Virgen de Guadalupe allowed me to return to parts of my upbringing I had disregarded.
Sandra Cisneros