Quote

I lose things. I write things and they disappear from my desk, my life. I move a lot. I wanted to gather them and put them under one roof, under one cover, so I could document my life in a series of snapshots.

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
Wanted
Cover
Writing
Disappear
Snapshots
Things
Series
Document
Life
Move
Desk
Lose
Desks
Loses
Gather
Moving
Documents
Write
Roof

More quotes by Sandra Cisneros

Image
The border between the dead and the living, if you're Mexican, doesn't exist. The dead are part of your life.
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
People know when you're speaking from el corazón. You have that pain. Take that pain and do something with it. That's very powerful.
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
Each book gets harder, each book gets harder and harder. I always feel like crying when I have to write.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
Your prospective employer, or the person you have a crush on, or the person you want to talk to. You're judging yourself, you know, thinking about your listener. You're not thinking about what you're saying. And that same thing happens when you write.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
I don't close myself to the possibility of someplace outside the United States, but it would have to be someplace with an indigenous community, because that's where I feel at home.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
There's a lot of people that need these stories, and they can't come to my book, so I'm going to be the bookmobile and I'm going to come to them.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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
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
The devil knows more from experience than from being the devil
Sandra Cisneros
Image
I think one of the great primordial fears we have once we become conscious of our aloneness as children is the fear of losing our mother. We have that from the moment we realize we can lose her just in the supermarket. As a child, it was more terrifying than arithmetic.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
The older you get, the more power you have with language as a writer, which means that you have to be extra responsible for what you say, whether it's in print or in front of a microphone, because those words can go out and kill or go out and plant seeds for peace.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
The truth has a strange way of following you, of coming up to you and making you listen to what it has to say.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
I'm not afraid to say what I'm afraid of. Does that make me fearless?
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
I realize that it's like spices in the kitchen. I need that turmeric. I'm sorry, but cinnamon isn't going to substitute . I feel that I can teach my listener about a new word they can use too. Well, what words are part of my own community, even if I'm monolingual, that I'm not allowing myself to use in a public sphere?
Sandra Cisneros
Image
A second person that's come to my life very recently, and I'm thankful for it, is Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of the Nonviolent Communication Organization. He has all these books about how we can use our language nonviolently to help create peace. He's using a lot of Buddhism too, but he's helping me to think about language.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
I like to think about the bestseller list as, This is the medicine cabinet of a very sick country. Let me look and see what they're reading that isn't nourishing them.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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