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Don't be afraid to say what you don't know, and speak for what you do know. Say, I can't speak for all Latinas, but I can speak for me and tell you very, very honestly.
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
Speak
Tell
Latinas
Latina
Honestly
Afraid
More quotes by Sandra Cisneros
I realize that it's like spices in the kitchen. I need that turmeric. I'm sorry, but cinnamon isn't going to substitute . I feel that I can teach my listener about a new word they can use too. Well, what words are part of my own community, even if I'm monolingual, that I'm not allowing myself to use in a public sphere?
Sandra Cisneros
There are two things you need to ask for, to open up that channel, so you get the light. One is humility, because our ego is always going to block that guidance, and so you ask for humility.And the second thing you're going to ask for is courage, because what you're going to be asked to do is bigger than what you think you can do.
Sandra Cisneros
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
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.
Sandra Cisneros
I look at Thich Nhat Hanh and I look at Marshall Rosenberg, and they're more concerned about the long range. And that long range means that you have to sit down with people who don't think like you. I want to reach people who don't think like me.
Sandra Cisneros
Each book gets harder, each book gets harder and harder. I always feel like crying when I have to write.
Sandra Cisneros
When you become a driver, they don't tell you that you have to switch languages. The drivers have their own language and they don't tell you that as girls. How am I supposed to know that blinking light means something? There are all these little languages that you have to know, but you don't know.
Sandra Cisneros
Marshall Rosenberg talks about how we can create peace in the communities we work with. He's been traveling to warring nations to create peace within those countries.
Sandra Cisneros
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
You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are.
Sandra Cisneros
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
My mom was a frustrated woman, like so many unhappy women who didn't get the opportunities they wanted.
Sandra Cisneros
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
I realize that when I moved out of my father’s house I shocked and frightened him because I needed a room of my own, a space of my own to reinvent myself.
Sandra Cisneros
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
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
I had to learn quick, because I was performing in Cinco de Mayo festivals with babies crying and people lifting their beers, and you know the feather dancers would come, and they'd say, What are you, a poet? You're next.
Sandra Cisneros
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
People like to blame Mexican food, but look at what's happening globally, look at all the fast foods and products filled with trans fat. Before the Mexican Revolution, a hundred years ago, people were eating what now macrobiotics tells us to eat, corn, black beans, rice. That's what people were eating - and chile peppers. That's a healthy diet.
Sandra Cisneros
But I deal with this by meditating and by understanding I've been put on the planet to serve humanity. I have to remind myself to live simply and not overindulge, which is a constant battle in a material world.
Sandra Cisneros
