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I live in a town that's two and a half hours from the border. I know people who have lived in San Antonio for generations, sometimes seven generations, their families are from there, and they are of Mexican descent, and they've never gone farther than the border.

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
Sometimes
Seven
Descent
Never
Lived
Farther
People
Generations
Border
Gone
Mexican
Hours
Borders
Half
Town
Two
Families
Live
Towns
Antonio

More quotes by Sandra Cisneros

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If you just breathe, and go slower, you will have enough energy. It's really important because there are people who wait in line, and your work has changed their lives. You will need to listen to them because they are also going to feed you and give you confirmation of the prayer you asked before you spoke.
Sandra Cisneros
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I have to say my favorite stories are ghost stories. I don't like to see these made-up monster films or scary films with ghosts. It doesn't do anything to me. But a real ghost story that someone tells me, that I like.
Sandra Cisneros
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I've put up with too much, too long, and now I'm just too intelligent, too powerful, too beautiful, too sure of who I am finally to deserve anything less.
Sandra Cisneros
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For example, there's no word emocionó in English, so I have to say, You, you really emotioned me, It's more precise, even though it sounds odd. My father emotioned me. Or That performance really emotioned to me.
Sandra Cisneros
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The comments you'll get from a filmmaker about your performance are going to be very different. My writing workshop is about mixing it up, cross-pollinating, not only in genres but in occupations.
Sandra Cisneros
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My readers are as diverse as any group you will ever see. Something that booksellers always tell me. That they are always surprised at the kind of people that come to my readings. That they are such a mix of ages and colors. It looks like people spilling out of an elevator.
Sandra Cisneros
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San Antonio drives me crazy, but Chicago drives me crazy in a different way.
Sandra Cisneros
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The good thing about Dennis [ Mathis] is, even though he's a white, he respected that I was doing something quirky with my English. He loved it when I would mix up the Americanisms and say, That's water over the dam.
Sandra Cisneros
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What you're going to be asked to do is bigger than what you think you can do. It's always bigger than what you think you can handle, but you're never going to be given something you can't handle.
Sandra Cisneros
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I know the books that I need to help me to be wiser than my years and be kinder and more compassionate and more patient than I really am.
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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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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I think people should read fairy tales, because were hungry for a mythology that will speak to our fears.
Sandra Cisneros
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The devil knows more from experience than from being the devil
Sandra Cisneros
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I hope I'm not just looked as a writer that is popular but as a writer of literary value.
Sandra Cisneros
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The world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning.
Sandra Cisneros
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We changed it to emocionó, the way you say in Spanish, to emotion me [to be moved]. That, as opposed to haunt. We wanted the feeling of sadness and grief and obsession, so we used emocionó.
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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Books are medicine and you have to take the right medicine that you need at that moment or that day or that time in your life.
Sandra Cisneros
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I also learned to tell a story. I think I learned from poetry how to time a story. Poetry's timing, beats and pauses. That white space on the page is as important as the black. The bottom of the page is blackout. It's performance.
Sandra Cisneros