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I'm from Chicago, so the Chicago working-class poets still mean a great deal to me.

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
Still
Poets
Mean
Chicago
Great
Poet
Deal
Deals
Class
Working
Stills

More quotes by 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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If you have potato chips, that means, Who's coming over?Wealthy people - white people who're wealthy - have a bag of potato chips that's folded over with a clip. What? There's some left over? In my house, if there was a bag of potato chips, we'd pour it in a bowl and everybody would just dip in till it was gone.
Sandra Cisneros
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As people who are women, who are Indigenous and live on Indigenous lands, we know, and this is something I understand the older I get, that they don't visit the same way the postman may visit but they do visit. They visit in ways that our modern society often disregards and considers immaterial or unreal.
Sandra Cisneros
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I never know what something is going to be until it emerges from the womb and you see the crown of its head and then you see it pushing its way up. So in my life if another book wants to be born it's not for me to choose.
Sandra Cisneros
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What I recommend is this: after you've talked to everybody, go take a nap! Take a nap. Your body really needs to sleep. It's like washing your face. If you can't afford a three-hour nap, do a one-hour nap. If you can't afford a one-hour nap, do half an hour. If you can't afford half an hour, do fifteen minutes.
Sandra Cisneros
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I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog.
Sandra Cisneros
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I've been on television saying, ¡Vamos a la biblioteca!. That was great. Nobody had ever asked me.
Sandra Cisneros
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I can't hang around with lots of people these days because I am hypersensitive. So when I am around a lot of people or a big roomful of people I get almost autistic. I get overwhelmed and really tired. So I don't like being around large groups.
Sandra Cisneros
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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
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You don't have to be the specialist on everything. You can try to inform yourself.
Sandra Cisneros
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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
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There's a lot of people that need these stories, and they can't come to my book, so I'm going to be the bookmobile and I'm going to come to them.
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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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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One way to get very humble is to dedicate the work you're going to do to your community.
Sandra Cisneros
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I want to thank you, especially those people who are agnostic or atheist. I don't mean any offense by the things I said of the spirit world. Thank you for allowing me to speak about the spiritual, because I can't talk about my life or writing without mentioning that.
Sandra Cisneros
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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.
Sandra Cisneros
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So how are you supposed to learn how to drive with this guy yapping at you? My brothers were the ones who got to practice. So when you have to get on the expressway, you're afraid. That's what I think. That's why I take back routes on two-lane highways.
Sandra Cisneros
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You know, we should have cards like the deaf have. Can't talk, I'm writing today.
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