We have all this courage as writers, but then there's this fear. Sandra Cisneros More Quotes by Sandra Cisneros More Quotes From Sandra Cisneros I think there's some great stuff coming. I do feel that. I think we have reached our Harlem Renaissance. Sandra Cisneros renaissancestuffthinking There's no perfect place, there's no wonderful utopia. Sandra Cisneros utopiaperfectwonderful San Antonio drives me crazy, but Chicago drives me crazy in a different way. Sandra Cisneros chicagocrazydifferent One way to get very humble is to dedicate the work you're going to do to your community. Sandra Cisneros communityhumbleway I usually meditate and I call my spirit allies - anyone in the spirit world that I've got connections with. Even in the spirit world you need connections! Sandra Cisneros alliesconnectionsneeds The border between the dead and the living, if you're Mexican, doesn't exist. The dead are part of your life. Like my dad, who's not here, but he's here.That's why there's the Day of the Dead. There's such a connection with the dead. Sandra Cisneros mexicanconnectionsdad That's why it's important to be multilingual, because it teaches you so much about your own language. Sandra Cisneros teachlanguageimportant If educators were really understanding of that, they'd say, "You know what? Forget about bilingual, we're going to do multilingual education." So children are ready for the new millennium. We're way behind compared to countries in Europe. If we were multilingual, imagine how much you would learn about your own culture, about the sensibilities of what's important in your own culture. Sandra Cisneros europecountrychildren To this day, on my cheat days from my diet, which are New Year's Eve and my birthday, I buy luxury foods that are very indicative of my class. Sandra Cisneros new-yearclassyears 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 whitemeanpeople For example, there's no word emocionó in English, so I have to say, "You, you really emotioned me," It's more precise, even though it sounds odd. "My father emotioned me." Or "That performance really emotioned to me." Sandra Cisneros examplesoundfather 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 mexicanpeopleyears I was one of those people raised by a woman who was what I call a prisoner of war. She was captured, she didn't want to be there, she was unhappy, she was banging away in the kitchen, the way that a prisoner would bang on her jail cell, you know, really unhappy. She had to cook for nine people with really little money, so she really just got burned out. So I didn't know that you could actually cook and it would be calming, pleasurable. Sandra Cisneros jailcellswar 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 gasolinecommunitybuying I was so happy when I went to Rome and I saw that the Romans eat them too, the squash blossoms. [...] No wonder I like the Italians! Sandra Cisneros squashromesaws By community I mean that community you have a special vision for, that only you see, that no one else in a room sees. That special community in pain, that through a pain you've suffered, you're able to have that vision, that super-ray vision. Sandra Cisneros paincommunitymean I have to say my favorite stories are ghost stories. I don't like to see these made-up monster films or scary films with ghosts. It doesn't do anything to me. But a real ghost story that someone tells me, that I like. Sandra Cisneros ghost-storiesscaryreal You know that you wouldn't take a baby on a plane without diapers, so when you leave your house, take care of you, like you would a baby. Don't leave your house without packing some healthy things. Sandra Cisneros healthyhousebaby I think that we need to measure how we give dollars to libraries by need. And the communities that are poor, in my opinion, should get more because you have to do more outreach. Sandra Cisneros communitygivingthinking The ideal for me is to mix it up. When I have a writing workshop, I like to have people that are anthropologists and people who are poking around in other fields, I like to have them all in the same workshop, and not worry about genre. Sandra Cisneros worrywritingpeople
