Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sandra Cisneros
Age: 69
Born: 1954
Born: December 20
Arts Administrator
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Short Story Writer
Teacher
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Understands
Usually
Audience
Term
American
Contexts
Whether
Latina
Certain
Depending
Mexican

More quotes by Sandra Cisneros

Image
There are two things you need to ask for, to open up that channel, so you get the light. One is humility, because our ego is always going to block that guidance, and so you ask for humility.And the second thing you're going to ask for is courage, because what you're going to be asked to do is bigger than what you think you can do.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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
Image
Everything that is most mine belongs to everyone now.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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
Image
You know how women have this clock when they want to have a baby? I had this clock where I wanted to win a national award by thirty, be at a big press by thirty-five. I was always working with these self-driven goals.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
People like to blame Mexican food, but look at what's happening globally, look at all the fast foods and products filled with trans fat. Before the Mexican Revolution, a hundred years ago, people were eating what now macrobiotics tells us to eat, corn, black beans, rice. That's what people were eating - and chile peppers. That's a healthy diet.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
This is the age of fear and so many of us feel afraid to speak out about what has happened to our lives in the wake of 9/11. Television promotes the world as a scary place for the United States and this justifies peeling away every element of privacy we had before. The media is monopolized so we don't even hear a lot of dissent about this new era.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
That's all you have to ask from yourself writing a book. That it's the best you can do and that you did it without any ego involved and that you did it for somebody else. That's the best you can do.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
Many books that you read, they have those disclaimers that say that, None of the events and none of the people are based on real life and so on... Well, I don't believe that. I think that as human beings many people touch us, especially people we love the most and we can't help but do character sketches when we go to our art.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We tend to think of orphans as being the protagonist of stories we read when we're kids, and yet here you are: you're an adult, you're supposed to manage, you're supposed to get over it, you're supposed to go on with your life, and you feel like a lost child.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We women shouldn't get our driver's licenses till real late in life.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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
Image
Being on a highway, all that speed and aggression, is very terrifying to me.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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
Image
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
Image
You know, we should have cards like the deaf have. Can't talk, I'm writing today.
Sandra Cisneros