Sandra Cisneros Quotes

I've put up with too much, too long, and now I'm just too intelligent, too powerful, too beautiful, too sure of who I am finally to deserve anything less.

I tell people to write the stories that you're afraid to talk about, the stories you wish you'd forget, because those have the most power. Those are the ones that have the most strength when you give them as a testimony.

You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are.

It takes a long time for women to feel it's alright to be chingona. To aspire to be a chingona!...You are saying, 'This is my camino, this is my path and I'm gonna follow it, regardless of what culture says.' I don't think the church likes chingonas. I don't think the state likes chingonas.! And fathers definitely do not like chingonas. And boyfriends don't like chingonas. But, you know, I remain optimistic. I will meet a man who likes a chingona, one day. One day, my chingon will come.

We need to write because so many of our stories are not being heard. Where could they be heard in this era of fear and media monopolies? Writing allows us to transform what has happened to us and to fight back against what's hurting us. While not everyone is an author, everyone is a writer and I think that the process of writing is deeply spiritual and liberatory.

I am obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in her skin.

If you know two cultures and two languages, that intermediate place, where the two don't perfectly meet, is really interesting.

My weapon has always been language, and I've always used it, but it has changed. Instead of shaping the words like knives now, I think they're flowers, or bridges.

The beauty of literature is you allow readers to see things through other peoples eyes. All good books do this.

I'm not afraid to say what I'm afraid of. Does that make me fearless?

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.

The most powerful speaking you can do is the speaking that comes from your heart and your love.

There are two things you need to ask for, to open up that channel, so you get the light. One is humility, because our ego is always going to block that guidance, and so you ask for humility.And the second thing you're going to ask for is courage, because what you're going to be asked to do is bigger than what you think you can do.

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.

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.

'Hispanic' is English for a person of Latino origin who wants to be accepted by the white status quo. 'Latino' is the word we have always used for ourselves.

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

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.

You were given that pain and that vision because you have something to do with it.

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.

I have to say that the traditional role is kind of a myth. I think the traditional Mexican woman is a fierce woman.

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.

Maybe all pain in the world requires poetry.

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

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