Sandra Cisneros Quotes - Page 9

I remember I was very taken with a book called DreamTigers by [Jorge Luis] Borges. He was at the University of Texas, Austin, and they collected some of his writings and put them in a little collection. It's called DreamTigers in English, but it doesn't exist in Spanish. It's a little sampler. But that collection in English is what struck me, because in there he has his poems, and I was a poet as well as a fiction writer.

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.

[Dennis Mathis] was very sensitive about keeping the unique way that I spoke English - it had a lot of Mexicanisms or Mexican syntax. So you keep it in because it's adding something unique.

Every book takes you to the terror, that terrible place of possible failure.

I think people are much more concerned about money now. There aren't the big advances of the past. You feel the sense of nervousness about the book industry. It's not like before. Not that I knew very much about what it was like because I was a newcomer to it, but I get that feeling that people are more conservative in their book choices and what they are going to publish and what's a sure sell. As opposed to - just like in the economy - a sense of luxury and sense of risk taking ten years ago.

The good thing about Dennis [ Mathis] is, even though he's a white, he respected that I was doing something quirky with my English. He loved it when I would mix up the Americanisms and say, "That's water over the dam."

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.

There [DreamTigers by Jorge Luis Borges] were these little fablesque things, you know, dream tigers, beautiful, beautiful pieces that when you read them had the power of a long piece, but they were prose, and they had the power of poetry, in that the last line wasn't the end, it was a reverberation, like when you tap on a glass made of crystal, and it goes ping.

Those of us who are writers and have to perform to communities that aren't used to coming to book events, I would recommend taking some theater.

Sometimes hearing the stories is going to change people's lives much more than if they read it.

I'm from Chicago, so the Chicago working-class poets still mean a great deal to me.

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.

I was reading Carl Sandburg and Gwendolyn Brooks, and I'm still very, very deeply moved by Gwendolyn Brooks's life and her work.

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.

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.

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.

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

I never paid attention when people said, "That's gotta be poetry. That's gotta be fiction," except when I was in a graduate program, and you had to claim your genre.

Many books that you read, they have those disclaimers that say that, "None of the events and none of the people are based on real life" and so on... Well, I don't believe that. I think that as human beings many people touch us, especially people we love the most and we can't help but do character sketches when we go to our art.

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.

Every single house has had death visit.

Even if you're an agnostic or an atheist, you can create an altar, because an altar is simply paying homage to someone's life and celebrating what they did.

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.

My mom was a frustrated woman, like so many unhappy women who didn't get the opportunities they wanted.

I think there's a rule that once you want to live somewhere, you can't find a job.