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I never paid attention when people said, That's gotta be poetry. That's gotta be fiction, except when I was in a graduate program, and you had to claim your genre.

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
People
Claims
Program
Paid
Except
Graduate
Poetry
Graduates
Fiction
Gotta
Attention
Claim
Never
Genre

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.
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You know, you want to be outrageous when you're young, so all the young people say, Oooh . . . Now my tactics are different.
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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.
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I think diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone.
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I don't think I'll write a large novel again because it was like being in jail for me. Even though that's the funniest book I've ever written, it was the saddest period of my life.
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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.
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Everything that is most mine belongs to everyone now.
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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.
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I was reading all these male writers who were doing wild and wonderful things. It gave me permission to experiment.
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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.
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To me, the Virgen de Guadalupe is just a vessel for me to recognize my own God within myself.
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Maybe all pain in the world requires poetry.
Sandra Cisneros
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I'm from Chicago, so the Chicago working-class poets still mean a great deal to me.
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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I can't do a linear novel. I'm just going to write what I need to write.
Sandra Cisneros
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How can art make a difference in the world?
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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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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If you know two cultures and two languages, that intermediate place, where the two don't perfectly meet, is really interesting.
Sandra Cisneros
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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