Sandra Cisneros Quotes

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.

You don’t want somebody who doesn’t know his own heart, do you? You’ll find someone who’s brave enough to love you. Someday. One day. Not today.

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.

The world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning.

I realize that when I moved out of my father’s house I shocked and frightened him because I needed a room of my own, a space of my own to reinvent myself.

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.

[Jorge Luis Borges] had short stories, and I was trying to learn how to write short stories, and then he had these things in the middle that were like fables, and I loved hearing fables.

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.

I am a woman, and I am a Latina. Those are the things that make my writing distinctive. Those are the things that give my writing power.

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.

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.

If you start thinking about who’s going to read it [you’re writing], or what grade will you get, or is it going to win that award, or are you going to get into this graduate program, you’re blocking the light, and the light is that guidance and love we get when we open up our hearts and are guided by our higher selves, or God, or the Buddha Lupe [Buddha and the Virgin of Guadalupe fused together, as they are in the tattoo on Sandra’s right arm], or whatever you believe in, or love.