Quote

You can try reading books that will help you be a leader, like Marshall Rosenberg and Thich Nhat Hanh. Be very humble and say, I don't know why. I don't feel qualified, but I accept this role that you gave me, and so help me.

Sandra Cisneros

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sandra Cisneros
Age: 69
Born: 1954
Born: December 20
Arts Administrator
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Short Story Writer
Teacher
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Helping
Accept
Hanh
Book
Gave
Rosenberg
Feel
Accepting
Nhat
Feels
Roles
Thich
Trying
Leader
Marshall
Like
Books
Qualified
Reading
Humble
Help
Role

More quotes by Sandra Cisneros

Image
I'm not afraid to say what I'm afraid of. Does that make me fearless?
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
What I've learned is, if I have to go out and speak, the best way to get people's attention is to tell them a story, tell them a story that came from my corazón.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It's difficult for me to have a large story, a very large story - a novel is a large story. I'm used to writing and doing these little miniature paintings.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
I am a woman, and I am a Latina. Those are the things that make my writing distinctive. Those are the things that give my writing power.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
Each book gets harder, each book gets harder and harder. I always feel like crying when I have to write.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
People know when you're speaking from el corazón. You have that pain. Take that pain and do something with it. That's very powerful.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
The older you get, the more power you have with language as a writer, which means that you have to be extra responsible for what you say, whether it's in print or in front of a microphone, because those words can go out and kill or go out and plant seeds for peace.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
I think no matter what you do you can't please everybody. You have to ask yourself, Did I do what I set out to do?
Sandra Cisneros
Image
I don't close myself to the possibility of someplace outside the United States, but it would have to be someplace with an indigenous community, because that's where I feel at home.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
The most powerful speaking you can do is the speaking that comes from your heart and your love.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
Every book changes my writing because I'm always trying to do something I didn't do before. I try to do what's hard for me, what I haven't done in the past.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
My Virgen de Guadalupe is not the mother of God. She is God. She is a face for a god without a face, an indigena for a god without ethnicity, a female deity for a god who is genderless, but I also understand that for her to approach me, for me to finally open the door and accept her, she had to be a woman like me.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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
Image
Like all guests, after a fortnight, grief is best beyond the door.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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