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You want to be able to say anything when you do your first draft, because some of that goofy stuff that you think has nothing to do with it is probably where the mother lode is.

Sandra Cisneros

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Sandra Cisneros
Age: 69
Born: 1954
Born: December 20
Arts Administrator
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Short Story Writer
Teacher
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Firsts
Nothing
Goofy
First
Draft
Think
Probably
Thinking
Stuff
Mother
Anything
Able

More quotes by Sandra Cisneros

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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
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If you're going to write about the river, you've got to get in.
Sandra Cisneros
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I want to write an essay called Fear of Mexico, because I always feel like Mexico's this lover that never writes to me.
Sandra Cisneros
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I don't just want to talk to the choir. I want to sit down and be respectful of the people who are most unlike me, to get them to hear me and think. It doesn't mean you're going to change them right there, but just so they can hear you and what you're saying.
Sandra Cisneros
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My mom was a frustrated woman, like so many unhappy women who didn't get the opportunities they wanted.
Sandra Cisneros
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I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate
Sandra Cisneros
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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
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That's what you need for your writing - to learn how to be present, learn how to be calm. So take that nap, do that meditation.
Sandra Cisneros
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Post 9/11, we've seen such disastrous policies on the border. I live two and a half hours away from the border, and I've seen changes for the communities there. I feel like it's an occupied zone. We're losing our rights, and both sides of the border are terrified. The Mexican population and the U.S. population are united in fear.
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 think that we need to measure how we give dollars to libraries by need. And the communities that are poor, in my opinion, should get more because you have to do more outreach.
Sandra Cisneros
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I was reading all these male writers who were doing wild and wonderful things. It gave me permission to experiment.
Sandra Cisneros
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What I've learned is, if I have to go out and speak, the best way to get people's attention is to tell them a story, tell them a story that came from my corazón.
Sandra Cisneros
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I know there are a lot of women who are afraid of driving on highways.
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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To this day, on my cheat days from my diet, which are New Year's Eve and my birthday, I buy luxury foods that are very indicative of my class.
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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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
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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
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The most powerful speaking you can do is the speaking that comes from your heart and your love.
Sandra Cisneros