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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

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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
Important
Learned
Timing
Time
Space
Page
Think
Story
Performance
Thinking
White
Performances
Black
Beats
Tell
Pages
Blackout
Stories
Bottom
Blackouts
Also
Poetry
Pauses

More quotes by Sandra Cisneros

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I don't think I'll write a large novel again because it was like being in jail for me. Even though that's the funniest book I've ever written, it was the saddest period of my life.
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I can't go to Hindu countries where they respect rats and mice, and I can't go camping. I don't like to go into subways, because I always see them. Rats are like my naguales [kindred animal spirits]. They follow me.
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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?
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The comments you'll get from a filmmaker about your performance are going to be very different. My writing workshop is about mixing it up, cross-pollinating, not only in genres but in occupations.
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I am obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in her skin.
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One of the things Thich Nhat Hanh taught me: he says, When you're in a hurry, go slower. That works every time, unless you're trying to catch a plane.
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Catholicism believes in the Virgen de Guadalupe. The mother of God is worshipped, especially in Latin America. I find her very empowering. I find that the Virgen de Guadalupe allowed me to return to parts of my upbringing I had disregarded.
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You know, if you've got nine people that you've got to get a treat for - because you do have sweet food, even if you're poor - you can't go out and buy a Sara Lee cake. You buy the big bag of cookies, those chocolate and vanilla ones with the icing. That has a lot of trans fat in it, but it goes a long way with a lot of people.
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The world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning.
Sandra Cisneros
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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
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I think diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone.
Sandra Cisneros
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When you're in that state of grief, any little breeze, any hello, any confrontation, any grazing of someone meeting your eyes, might cause you suddenly to burst into grief. You could be looking at a jar of peanut butter in the supermarket, and then start crying.
Sandra Cisneros
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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
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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
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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 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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Like all guests, after a fortnight, grief is best beyond the door.
Sandra Cisneros
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You get good at being by yourself and you're condemned to a life sentence of solitude. You think, Wait a minute! I should have been a tap dancer or something. But in my life, I feel like I take my stories to people orally.
Sandra Cisneros
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I never paid attention when people said, That's gotta be poetry. That's gotta be fiction, except when I was in a graduate program, and you had to claim your genre.
Sandra Cisneros
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Being on a highway, all that speed and aggression, is very terrifying to me.
Sandra Cisneros