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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: 70
Born: 1954
Born: December 20
Arts Administrator
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Short Story Writer
Teacher
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Tell
Latinas
Latina
Honestly
Afraid
Speak

More quotes by Sandra Cisneros

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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.
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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Every book takes you to the terror, that terrible place of possible failure.
Sandra Cisneros
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I was interested in cross-pollinating the two. I thought there was something lovely in the little vignette forms. I wanted to explore that.
Sandra Cisneros
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One way to get very humble is to dedicate the work you're going to do to your community. And by community I mean that community you have a special vision for, that only you see, that no one else in a room sees. That special community in pain, that through a pain you've suffered, you're able to have that vision, that super-ray vision.
Sandra Cisneros
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Your prospective employer, or the person you have a crush on, or the person you want to talk to. You're judging yourself, you know, thinking about your listener. You're not thinking about what you're saying. And that same thing happens when you write.
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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Maybe all pain in the world requires poetry.
Sandra Cisneros
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Everything that I write comes when it wants to, out of its own need and it dictates its form. I don't say, I am going to write a novel.
Sandra Cisneros
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I was silent as a child, and silenced as a young woman I am taking my lumps and bumps for being a big mouth, now, but usually from those whose opinion I don't respect.
Sandra Cisneros
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Now I feel life is really short and I have to take care of things.
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.
Sandra Cisneros
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I lose things. I write things and they disappear from my desk, my life. I move a lot. I wanted to gather them and put them under one roof, under one cover, so I could document my life in a series of snapshots.
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.
Sandra Cisneros
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I was reading all these male writers who were doing wild and wonderful things. It gave me permission to experiment.
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
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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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We women shouldn't get our driver's licenses till real late in life.
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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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