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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.

Sandra Cisneros

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Sandra Cisneros
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: December 20
Arts Administrator
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Short Story Writer
Teacher
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
People
Publishing
Excellent
Started
Reading
Care
Better
Long
Good

More quotes by Sandra Cisneros

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People paused to listen to Denise Chávez and she had them - with gum on her shoes, she had them. She said she stepped on gum when she came up to the stage and she couldn't move, so she had to stay in one spot otherwise people would see the Chiclet.
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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I learn through listening and watching other performers that are very good, like Denise Chávez, Dorothy Allison.
Sandra Cisneros
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I believe love is always eternal. Even if eternity is only five minutes.
Sandra Cisneros
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You know that you wouldn't take a baby on a plane without diapers, so when you leave your house, take care of you, like you would a baby. Don't leave your house without packing some healthy things.
Sandra Cisneros
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There's no perfect place, there's no wonderful utopia.
Sandra Cisneros
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I am not in touch with other writers. I don't have very much contact with other writers. I don't get invited to these things or I don't go to them. I hate panels. I speak to librarians and to conferences of English teachers. That's what I do: teachers and librarians. And high school kids.
Sandra Cisneros
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I've been on television saying, ¡Vamos a la biblioteca!. That was great. Nobody had ever asked me.
Sandra Cisneros
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The experience taught me to be present in the real Buddhist sense of paying attention to the moment.
Sandra Cisneros
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I remember when they started publishing Latino fiction years ago. You had to be really good to get published. Now you don't have to be that good.
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
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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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One press account said I was an overnight success. I thought that was the longest night I've ever spent.
Sandra Cisneros
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Afterwards, people come and say, I felt like you said that just to me. What you said is something I'm going through right now, so you know that spiritual connection is going on.
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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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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If you can't fall asleep, learn how to meditate. I would recommend you listen to a beautiful tape called Spiritual Power, Spiritual Practice [Energy Evaluation Meditations For Morning and Evening, 1998]. It was the one that got me out of my writer's block when I was writing Caramelo. It's by Carolyn Myss.
Sandra Cisneros
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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
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Perhaps the community you mentioned might not come to the story. Sometimes you have to take the story to them, and perform it, and that's another way that I get an alternate point of view that isn't the official version of history out to a community. I feel that's what I've been doing since Caramelo.
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