Quote

I learn through listening and watching other performers that are very good, like Denise Chávez, Dorothy Allison.

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
Good
Denise
Like
Allison
Dorothy
Performers
Watching
Listening
Learn

More quotes by Sandra Cisneros

Image
The experience taught me to be present in the real Buddhist sense of paying attention to the moment.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
You don't have to be the specialist on everything. You can try to inform yourself.
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
Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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
Image
I don't see any kind of mirror of power, male power, that is, as a form of liberation. I don't believe in an eye for an eye. I don't believe this is truly freedom.
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
My Spanish is a daughter's Spanish. I write, but my Spanish really is very limited.
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 don't like to go into subways, because I always see them [ mice]. They are like my naguales [kindred animal spirits]. They follow me. I have literally stepped off of a plane in Phoenix and gotten my bag and stepped out on the curb and they'll be a big desert rat walking right in front of me.
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
Image
I feel comfortable in Spanish, I chat like a parrot, but I don't have the confidence in Spanish that I do in English.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet.
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
I live in a town that's two and a half hours from the border. I know people who have lived in San Antonio for generations, sometimes seven generations, their families are from there, and they are of Mexican descent, and they've never gone farther than the border.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Everything that is most mine belongs to everyone now.
Sandra Cisneros
Image
I do travel a lot, because I need oxygen, I need to go to places to meet people who aren't upset at me because I'm asking for peace.
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