Sandra Cisneros
Even if you don't believe in God, you have to believe in love.Collection: Believe
I wish somebody had told me love does not die, that we can continue to receive and give love after death.Collection: Giving
You know, you want to be outrageous when you're young, so all the young people say, "Oooh . . ." Now my tactics are different.Collection: People
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.Collection: Reading
I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plateCollection: Men
When I'm starting to feel, "How many more people are there?" I go slower. I ask questions, and that person engaging with me gives me energy.Collection: Giving
[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.Collection: Writing
I didn't marry. I didn't have children. I followed the food supply for jobs. I kept writing at night. And that kept me moving. It kept my life disruptive. It broke up many relationships. Was it worth it? Yes.Collection: Jobs
I think people should read fairy tales, because were hungry for a mythology that will speak to our fears.Collection: Thinking
A second person that's come to my life very recently, and I'm thankful for it, is Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of the Nonviolent Communication Organization. He has all these books about how we can use our language nonviolently to help create peace. He's using a lot of Buddhism too, but he's helping me to think about language.Collection: Book
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!Collection: Rome
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.Collection: Cities
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."Collection: Book
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.Collection: Healthy
I'm filled with a new joy mixed with old grief.Collection: Grief
[Courage] always bigger than what you think you can handle, but you're never going to be given something you can't handle. So you say, "Okay, when you tell me what it is that I'm supposed to do, please give me the courage to do it."Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Order
I can get by and chatter and talk and tell funny stories, make people laugh, but I don't have as many words, I don't have the vocabulary. I think if I forced myself to read in Spanish - you know, I always say I'm going to, but I lose my patience reading in Spanish, because I really do read the way a third grader does, mouthing the words. That takes a long time!Collection: Reading
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.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Country
When you're in that state of grief, any little breeze, any hello, any confrontation, any grazing of someone meeting your eyes, might cause you suddenly to burst into grief. You could be looking at a jar of peanut butter in the supermarket, and then start crying.Collection: Grief
I think that you need to have books that talk about the lives of the poor, and they need to be involved - involved in acquisitions.Collection: Book
Like all guests, after a fortnight, grief is best beyond the door.Collection: Grief
I began writing as an experimental writer.Collection: Writing
Everything that I write comes when it wants to, out of its own need and it dictates its form. I don't say, "I am going to write a novel."Collection: Writing
I know there are a lot of women who are afraid of driving on highways.Collection: Driving
Even if we don't know if God exists, we can be certain love exists, because its power transcends death.Collection: Certain
As Indigenous peoples, we know there is more to the world. We know spirits exist. We know as women, because we're especially attuned to this kind of knowledge, that spirits exist and have a presence in our lives. Some of us are gifted and can communicate with the spirit world. Not everyone has that gift and can perceive the borders between the living and the dead and our society actively discourages us of exploring the knowledge of what many of us have already always known in our cultures.Collection: Borders
My Virgen de Guadalupe is not the mother of God. She is God. She is a face for a god without a face, an indigena for a god without ethnicity, a female deity for a god who is genderless, but I also understand that for her to approach me, for me to finally open the door and accept her, she had to be a woman like me.Collection: Mother
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.Collection: Prayer
I think diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone.Collection: Eye
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.Collection: Crush
You know how sometimes you meet writers that are so full of themselves? They feel really proud that they wrote something . But what they don't understand - and I like to tell this to writers - is that writing is like fishing. It's just like fishing. If you don't fish that often, you're not going to catch that many fish.Collection: Writing
The border between the dead and the living, if you're Mexican, doesn't exist. The dead are part of your life.Collection: Mexican
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?Collection: Spiritual
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.Collection: Mother
Maybe all pain in the world requires poetry.Collection: Pain
I think no matter what you do you can't please everybody. You have to ask yourself, "Did I do what I set out to do?"Collection: Thinking
The ego's blocking the light from coming.Collection: Block
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.Collection: Trying
I hope I'm not just looked as a writer that is popular but as a writer of literary value.Collection: Values
Write about what makes you different.Collection: Inspiration
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.Collection: Oxygen
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.Collection: Mean
Well, when you're an immigrant writer, or an immigrant, you're not always welcome to this country unless you're the right immigrant. If you have a Mexican accent, people look at you like, you know, where do you come from and why don't you go back to where you came from? So, even though I was born in the United States, I never felt at home in the United States. I never felt at home until I moved to the Southwest, where, you know, there's a mix of my culture with the U.S. culture, and that was why I lived in Texas for 25 years.Collection: Country
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.Collection: Girl
When I was a child, I was very shy, and there's still a part of me that's very shy.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Color