110+ Sandra Cisneros Quotes On Reading, Poetic And Heartfelt

Sandra Cisneros is an American author best known for her novel The House on Mango Street. She is a poet, short story writer, and essayist whose work explores the lives of the working-class. Her books and poetry are heavily influenced by her Mexican-American heritage and explore themes of feminism, identity, and belonging. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Sandra Cisneros on reading, poetic, heartfelt.

Top 10 Sandra Cisneros Quotes

1. I am obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in her skin.
2. You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are.
3. The beauty of literature is you allow readers to see things through other peoples eyes. All good books do this.
4. If you know two cultures and two languages, that intermediate place, where the two don't perfectly meet, is really interesting.
5. 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.
6. You can never have too much sky.
7. I believe love is always eternal. Even if eternity is only five minutes.
8. I usually say Latina, Mexican-American or American Mexican, and in certain contexts, Chicana, depending on whether my audience understands the term or not.
9. I try to be as honest about what I see and to speak rather than be silent, especially if it means I can save lives, or serve humanity.
10. The border between the dead and the living, if you're Mexican, doesn't exist. The dead are part of your life.

Sandra Cisneros Image Quotes

You can never have too much sky. — Sandra Cisneros

I believe love is always eternal. Even if eternity is only five minutes. — Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros Short Quotes

• The thoughts of letting go of everything I love overwhelms like a tsunami of sorrow.
• Like all guests, after a fortnight, grief is best beyond the door.
• You'll change. You'll see. Wait till you meet Mr. Right.
• Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in
• I think diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone.
• I know there are a lot of women who are afraid of driving on highways.
• My idea of a meal, if I was hungry, was to open a bag of potato chips.
• Even if you don't believe in God, you have to believe in love.
• The devil knows more from experience than from being the devil
• I'm not afraid to say what I'm afraid of. Does that make me fearless?

Sandra Cisneros Quotes About Reading

I think people should read fairy tales, because were hungry for a mythology that will speak to our fears. — Sandra Cisneros

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

Every writer I admire is my teacher. If you look at it, and if you care to read carefully enough and to read and reread a text, you teach yourself something about craft. — Sandra Cisneros

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

I was reading all these male writers who were doing wild and wonderful things. It gave me permission to experiment. — Sandra Cisneros

When I was very young I was reading a lot of Latin American fiction, which later would be called "boom fiction." — Sandra Cisneros

My readers are as diverse as any group you will ever see. Something that booksellers always tell me. That they are always surprised at the kind of people that come to my readings. That they are such a mix of ages and colors. It looks like people spilling out of an elevator. — Sandra Cisneros

My friend, Dennis Mathis, was reading Eastern European and Japanese experimental writers, and I brought the Latin American writers to his attention, so we exchanged books and bounced off one another. — Sandra Cisneros

I think of reading as like a medicine cabinet. — Sandra Cisneros

We tend to think of orphans as being the protagonist of stories we read when we're kids, and yet here you are: you're an adult, you're supposed to manage, you're supposed to get over it, you're supposed to go on with your life, and you feel like a lost child. — Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros Quotes About Writer

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

All of my works are performance pieces, as is true for many writers of color, writers who have indigenous roots - because our basis is spoken word. — Sandra Cisneros

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

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

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

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

I didn't intend to be writing - the writer's life. I was just writing what came to me at the time, but it is a map of how this writer had to break many barriers to find, not a room of her own, but a house of her own. — Sandra Cisneros

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

I think my family and closest friends are learning about my need to withdraw, and I am learning how to restore and store my energy to both serve the community to the best of my ability and to serve my writer's heart. — Sandra Cisneros

I have to understand what my strengths and limitations are, and work from a true place. I try to do this as best I can while still protecting my writer self, which more than ever needs privacy. — Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros Quotes About People

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

I don't just want to talk to the choir. I want to sit down and be respectful of the people who are most unlike me, to get them to hear me and think. It doesn't mean you're going to change them right there, but just so they can hear you and what you're saying. — Sandra Cisneros

You know how they say, "Find your voice"? That's your voice, in your pajamas. And it doesn't mean that you're going to publish it or print it or people are going to see you in your pajamas. It just means you are going to construct the foundation in your pajamas, in that voice. — Sandra Cisneros

I look at Thich Nhat Hanh and I look at Marshall Rosenberg, and they're more concerned about the long range. And that long range means that you have to sit down with people who don't think like you. I want to reach people who don't think like me. — Sandra Cisneros

I don't know what the definition of a short story is, and I don't even care to answer that question. That's something somebody in academia would think about. I just want to tell a story, and if people listen, and if it stays with you, it's a story. — Sandra Cisneros

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

For me, a story's a story if people want to hear it; it's very much based on oral storytelling. And for me, a story is a story when people give me the privilege of listening when I'm speaking it out loud. — Sandra Cisneros

If you live in poor neighborhoods - I know from living in several poor neighborhoods - the worst supermarkets in the city are in the poorest neighborhoods, where people don't have cars. — Sandra Cisneros

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

"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

Sandra Cisneros Famous Quotes And Sayings

I'm a witch woman--high on tobacco and holy water. I'm a woman delighted with her disasters. They give me something to do. A profession of sorts...I have the magic of words. The power to charm and kill at will. — Sandra Cisneros

You can never have too much sky . You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad. Here there is too much sadness and not enough sky. Butterflies too are few and so are flowers and most things that are beautiful. Still, we take what we can get and make the best of it. — Sandra Cisneros

You can never have too much sky. — Sandra Cisneros

I believe love is always eternal. Even if eternity is only five minutes. — Sandra Cisneros

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? — Sandra Cisneros

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

Once you can open yourself to joy, you feel as if you've transformed your sadness into illumination, which is really all that art is. All we want to do is transform the negative emotions into light. We want to compost them into light. — Sandra Cisneros

True love in Mexico isn't between lovers; it's between a parent and a child. Mexico is a very intense culture of sons adoring their mothers, and this is why I claim that Mexican culture is matriarchal. Because the one constant, faithful, inviolable, holy love of loves - the love of your life - is not your wife or your lover; it's your mother. — Sandra Cisneros

Perhaps the greatest challenge has been trying to keep my time to myself and my private life private in order to do my job. Everything that is most mine belongs to everyone now. — Sandra Cisneros

What you're going to be asked to do is bigger than what you think you can do. It's always bigger than what you think you can handle, but you're never going to be given something you can't handle. — Sandra Cisneros

The older I get, the more I'm conscious of ways very small things can make a change in the world. Tiny little things, but the world is made up of tiny matters, isn't it? — Sandra Cisneros

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

And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out. — Sandra Cisneros

I have to get my will in order. I have to get the Macondo Foundation going. I want to invest the money and resources that I've gotten from working so hard so that it's shared and it has its life beyond me. — Sandra Cisneros

Heartbreak allows us to also experience joy and love but you have to walk through heartbreak to even know what joy is. Heartbreak is a constant and it is even necessary. It allows us the opportunity of introspection and exploration. Those processes are what is necessary to write and engage in the arts. — Sandra Cisneros

My feminism is humanism, with the weakest being those who I represent, and that includes many beings and life forms, including some men. — Sandra Cisneros

If you just breathe, and go slower, you will have enough energy. It's really important because there are people who wait in line, and your work has changed their lives. You will need to listen to them because they are also going to feed you and give you confirmation of the prayer you asked before you spoke. — Sandra Cisneros

The more you speak more languages, the more you understand about yourself. It's like being blind. You aren't less of a person, but you're missing out on wonderful things. — Sandra Cisneros

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

I lose things. I write things and they disappear from my desk, my life. I move a lot. I wanted to gather them and put them under one roof, under one cover, so I could document my life in a series of snapshots. — Sandra Cisneros

I'm just as unhappy about San Antonio as I was about Chicago. If you're unhappy about certain things, you're unhappy everywhere. — Sandra Cisneros

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

Sometimes I feel I can't quite master my written and spoken Spanish, because I'm too much a student of English. I would need another lifetime to learn it. — Sandra Cisneros

One press account said I was an overnight success. I thought that was the longest night I've ever spent. — Sandra Cisneros

The experience taught me to be present in the real Buddhist sense of paying attention to the moment. — Sandra Cisneros

I was raised in Chicago, so always used Latina. It's what my Father and brothers called ourselves, when we meant the entire Spanish-speaking community of Chicago. — Sandra Cisneros

I had no concept of this [healthy food] until very, very late in life, thanks to a trainer/nutritionist that I met who has been working with me since I was forty-five. — Sandra Cisneros

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

I was raised a Catholic, but with very liberal parents, so I had to find my spirituality. I've been looking for it since I was a child. I would find it in pieces of art, music, flowers, trees. Now I've come full circle finding God in clouds, flowers, and trees. — Sandra Cisneros

Instead of putting cheese with ranchero sauce, chile is really very good for you. If you put that in, you get flavoring, so you're not eating bland food, especially if you're used to spicy food. — Sandra Cisneros

This is the age of fear and so many of us feel afraid to speak out about what has happened to our lives in the wake of 9/11. Television promotes the world as a scary place for the United States and this justifies peeling away every element of privacy we had before. The media is monopolized so we don't even hear a lot of dissent about this new era. — Sandra Cisneros

Even my mom. I have to tell her, "If you want a snack, don't go to bed with potato chips. Eat a handful of pistachios and a handful of dates." — Sandra Cisneros

My trainer taught me, because he's Iranian, and that's a beautiful snack [pistachios]. I have some with me, actually, in my bag. You could eat that on a plane instead of the salted nuts. And a serving size a day is the size of your hand, not the size of your head! — Sandra Cisneros

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. And also they ate a lot of vegetables. — Sandra Cisneros

I think a lot of education has to be involved. If they would have alternative items, so that, say, for a dollar more, you can get breakfast tacos stuffed with egg whites, and olive oil, and avocado; not guacamole, because they put the salt in it. Just ask for fresh avocado slices, and you could have that. — Sandra Cisneros

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

Don't be afraid to say what you don't know, and speak for what you do know. Say, "I can't speak for all Latinas, but I can speak for me and tell you very, very honestly." — Sandra Cisneros

God made men by baking them in an oven, but he forgot about the first batch, and that's how Black people were born. And then he was so anxious about the next batch, he took them out of the oven too soon, so that's how White people were made. But the third batch he let cook until they were golden-golden-golden, and, honey, that's you and me. — Sandra Cisneros

I was interested in cross-pollinating the two. I thought there was something lovely in the little vignette forms. I wanted to explore that. — Sandra Cisneros

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

When you edit, you imagine your enemy is seated on the other side of the table. Your enemy! And your enemy is going to read that with a viciousness, because he knows where you didn't work on it. He's going to shake it and really aim for that jugular. So you are going to polish, and revise, and rewrite, and cut out, and shape it, so that your enemy has no place to grip it. That's how you revise. — Sandra Cisneros

I have this great fear of Mexico City. I won't go to Mexico City unless someone meets me at the airport and is with me. I just feel very vulnerable there. — Sandra Cisneros

Even though it's hard to believe, but people who know me really well know I'm shy. I have to go past that fear. — Sandra Cisneros

When you speak words that are relevant to people, they automatically shut up and you know you are in the presence of some very magical words. It's a gift when someone can listen and be quiet and not interrupt. — Sandra Cisneros

Being on a highway, all that speed and aggression, is very terrifying to me. — Sandra Cisneros

I'm learning a lot by reading teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron. They teach me because I feel like I have a responsibility to the communities that I speak to. — Sandra Cisneros

Friends started saying, "Oh, don't come. No vengas. It's dangerous for us, and we live here." Then there's also the issue, if you go back, and you happen to be Mexican-American, you get treated very differently [in Mexico] than if you're blond. If you say something wrong, they say, "Why don't you learn your mother tongue?" — Sandra Cisneros

You want to be able to say anything when you do your first draft, because some of that goofy stuff that you think has nothing to do with it is probably where the mother lode is. — Sandra Cisneros

That's all you have to ask from yourself writing a book. That it's the best you can do and that you did it without any ego involved and that you did it for somebody else. That's the best you can do. — Sandra Cisneros

I hope I'm not just looked as a writer that is popular but as a writer of literary value. — Sandra Cisneros

Afterwards, people come and say, "I felt like you said that just to me. What you said is something I'm going through right now," so you know that spiritual connection is going on. — Sandra Cisneros

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

When I was writing Caramelo the last couple of years, a sixty-hour work week was normal. And now I'm lucky if I have eight hours. — Sandra Cisneros

You have to remember that writing itself is so solitary. You start writing because you're lonely. — Sandra Cisneros

The TSA tears through your bags at the airport and the NSA watches what books you buy and what you say over the telephone and online. It doesn't feel like anything is private anymore. — Sandra Cisneros

When I lost my father, I thought I learned about grief and transition. However, nobody tells you what it's like to lose your mother. They don't tell you that you're going to feel like an orphan at whatever age you are as an adult. — Sandra Cisneros

If you're going to write about the river, you've got to get in. — Sandra Cisneros

I don't want to blame anybody, but I just want to tell you that the process of writing is antisocial, so on the days that you have something really important to write, go from lying down directly to your notepad or your computer. Do not talk. — Sandra Cisneros

I know the American Library Association has models for working with the poor. They do have that, and I think that we really need to put our efforts - if we want to think long-range and invest in the community so that we don't have to, you know, invest in prisons - into making a change, because I know that the library can make a change in a life, because it made a change in mine. — Sandra Cisneros

I feel like I am in a box of bees when I am in a room with lots of people and I'm just looking for the door. I find myself getting more and more agoraphobic as time goes on. — Sandra Cisneros

One way to get very humble is to dedicate the work you're going to do to your community. — Sandra Cisneros

I learned from the Macarturos. I had never been at a table with a labor organizer and a playwright and a performance artist and an anthropologist and a human rights lawyer. Usually at most gatherings, it's all writers. But suddenly I was at a table with all these different people and I learned from each of them, learned from the work they're doing, learned new ways to solve my problems. — Sandra Cisneros

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

You know how sometimes you're talking to people who love you and give you unconditional love, and you say, "But you know what? Let me back up. I forgot to say . . ."You can do that, right? You don't hesitate and say, "Oh my God! I forgot to say that!". You just speak! And you say it all, until you have nothing more to say. And that's your first draft. It's done. — Sandra Cisneros

I had a mother who walked to the library with me, and you can't walk to a lot of libraries in San Antonio because - guess what? - there are no sidewalks, except in the neighborhoods. And they're across big boulevards, and it's so hot, you can't even walk to the corner. So things like that affect how children can get to libraries. So there are a lot of things involved. — Sandra Cisneros

When I was at home, I wasn't shy. I was the clown at home, because I was loved. It was in the outside world that I was judged and I wasn't loved. That was very clear to me, that I wasn't loved. So I became very quiet. You know, those little girls you see in those pictures that look like they want to hunch, I was trying to disappear into my shoulder blades. The quietest person in the classroom, that was me. But that wasn't me at home. — Sandra Cisneros

We women shouldn't get our driver's licenses till real late in life. — Sandra Cisneros

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

I feel that I can teach my listener about a new word they can use too. — Sandra Cisneros

Believe me, that nap is better than sitting there for three hours and nothing's coming. I've learned that even if I've slept nine hours and I just finished breakfast, if I feel sleepy when I'm in front of that computer, I'll take a nap. And it really does help. — Sandra Cisneros

The truth has a strange way of following you, of coming up to you and making you listen to what it has to say. — Sandra Cisneros

Maybe all pain in the world requires poetry. — Sandra Cisneros

Life Lessons by Sandra Cisneros

1. From the work of Sandra Cisneros, we can learn the importance of embracing our identities and celebrating our unique perspectives.
2. She also reminds us to be mindful of the power of storytelling and how it can be used to connect with others and create meaningful dialogue.
3. Finally, her work encourages us to explore our own creative potential and use it to make a positive impact in our communities.