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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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Sandra Cisneros
Age: 69
Born: 1954
Born: December 20
Arts Administrator
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Short Story Writer
Teacher
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Doesn
Change
Right
Choir
Mean
Respectful
Going
Unlike
Think
Saying
Thinking
Hear
People
Talk

More quotes by Sandra Cisneros

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I believe love is always eternal. Even if eternity is only five minutes.
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I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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We can have our hearts broken over so much more. It is important to recognize the full spectrum of heartbreak. We can be heartbroken by lost and by disappointment. But heartbreak is not just this negative image we see, it's not this terrible experience that brings no benefits.
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I think people should read fairy tales, because were hungry for a mythology that will speak to our fears.
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What do we call our Harlem Renaissance? Maybe in the future, it won't be just Latino, maybe it'll be more multi-multi, because, you know, people are such fusions now, of so many different cultures.
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There's no perfect place, there's no wonderful utopia.
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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 can't do a linear novel. I'm just going to write what I need to write.
Sandra Cisneros
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Heartbreak makes us stronger it's an opportunity for spiritual growth. How can you understand someone else's pain if you have not yourself suffered?
Sandra Cisneros
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What I recommend is this: after you've talked to everybody, go take a nap! Take a nap. Your body really needs to sleep. It's like washing your face. If you can't afford a three-hour nap, do a one-hour nap. If you can't afford a one-hour nap, do half an hour. If you can't afford half an hour, do fifteen minutes.
Sandra Cisneros
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When we started publishing, you had to be better than good. You had to be excellent. But as long as people are reading, I don't care what they're reading.
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The writer Denise Chávez comments on poor food and what you associate with luxury food items. In fact, she wrote a whole book called A Taco Testimony, and though the title sounds light, it's a heavy book. It's about being working class and what kind of food is available to you that's cheap.
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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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
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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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True love in Mexico isn't between lovers it's between a parent and a child. Mexico is a very intense culture of sons adoring their mothers, and this is why I claim that Mexican culture is matriarchal. Because the one constant, faithful, inviolable, holy love of loves - the love of your life - is not your wife or your lover it's your mother.
Sandra Cisneros
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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