Quote

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

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

More quotes by Sandra Cisneros

Image
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
Image
I think I didn't know what I was creating, as much as I knew what I didn't want to do. And I didn't want my mother's life. She was an unhappy, frustrated artist who always dreamed of a life that was never going to be hers.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
Even if you don't believe in God, you have to believe in love.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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
Image
I've been on television saying, ¡Vamos a la biblioteca!. That was great. Nobody had ever asked me.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
[Courage] always bigger than what you think you can handle, but you're never going to be given something you can't handle. So you say, Okay, when you tell me what it is that I'm supposed to do, please give me the courage to do it.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
There's all kinds of ways to wean yourself off of sugar - because it is like an addiction.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
There's a lot of things that haven't been communicated to our communities. I didn't know these things myself. I didn't know that if you ate cheap food, it was like buying cheap gasoline, and there was a reason why after an hour you get headaches, or youhypoglycemic.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
The ability to be present with every single person and engage was a great model for me of the work that a writer needs to do. Writers, living or dead, still guide me in many ways.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
The devil knows more from experience than from being the devil
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in
Sandra Cisneros
Image
I was looking at a lot of experimental writers, and I was very intrigued by short-short fiction, writers who would write little things, what I call buttons now, little vignettes.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Many books that you read, they have those disclaimers that say that, None of the events and none of the people are based on real life and so on... Well, I don't believe that. I think that as human beings many people touch us, especially people we love the most and we can't help but do character sketches when we go to our art.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
I think the erotic is very spiritual, and I never see that spiritual dimension when you look at collections of erotica. That's always missing for me.
Sandra Cisneros