Top 15 Sandra Cisneros Quotes

I would never want to offend any writer by publicly admitting which books I’ve put down; it’s not the writer’s fault we didn’t click. Maybe the book arrived too early or too late in my life. If I sense a book isn’t likely to make me a better writer or a better human being, I release it. I have to. At 66 I haven’t got a lot of time left before I transmogrify into a maguey.

(What moves you most in a work of literature?) I’m not yet the writer I aspire to be, but at my age, great books written by women over 60 give me hope. Diana Athill, Colette, Harriett Doerr, Marguerite Duras, Grace Paley, Elena Poniatowska, Jean Rhys, Mercé Rodoreda, to name but a few.

For me the great shame and dolor of our times is the story of immigrant children.

It’s important that young people find the right books that speak to them at the right time, otherwise you might be encouraging them to dislike reading.

(Which writers — novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets — working today do you admire most?) Luis Rodriguez, Edwidge Danticat, Natalie Diaz, Rigoberto González, Virginia Grise, Joy Harjo, Helena Maria Viramontes, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Denise Chávez, Manuel Muñoz, Dorothy Allison, Levi Romero, John Phillip Santos, Charles M. Blow, Jorge Ramos, Carmen Aristegui, Elena Poniatowska, Luis Alfaro and every Mexican journalist who puts their life in danger by writing the truth. And, I hear a chavalo named Lin-Manuel in New York is pretty good.

I’m on a mission to make up for the huge gaps in my miseducation as a woman of color...At this point in my life, I want to read the classics from the Americas, from Mexico, from women, from the working class, from the Indigenous communities, from everyone who hasn’t been allowed to the podium before.

Even if a language disappears, I believe a worldview, a syntax, a cadence survives from which the conquering language builds upon, like the stones the Spanish conquistadores gathered from the Indigenous temples to build their Catholic churches. Something like that is happening in our poetic inheritance. Something old and ancient and sacred survives in the spoken word, which is fascinating for those of us who are word-workers.

Books are medicine. What heals me may not be the right prescription for anyone else.

Working-class women's literature, women of color, specifically Latina women's writing like my friend Ana Castillo's, or my friend Cherrie Moraga's, Helena Viramontes's, Elena Poniatowska's, and Marguerite Duval's sends me all the way to my typewriter as much as Manuel Puig's stories.

Language is much better than throwing stones; language is much, much stronger.

my favorite writers are, right now Merce Rodoreda, Grace Paley, Juan Rulfo, Manuel Puig, Marguerite Duras - these are my favorite writers. I'm trying to reach that world level. I think that we should always aim for that level.

In Chicana writing the love between a grandmother and a granddaughter is holier than the relationship between a mother and a daughter because the mother and daughter have to deal with the reality of the everyday, whereas the grandmother can be revered from afar. Especially if she’s dead, she becomes this mythic symbol in Chicana literature.

Of course I like to write about love, but then I’ll ask, how is Mexican love different from American love? I’ll look at the Mexican models of love, and that leads me to the true Mexican love. 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.

I like living in a town not dominated by cars. I like living in a small community where artists from around the world come and go. I like living in a town with big sky and big clouds, and where you can connect with things of the spirit easily. It’s both stimulating and peaceful all at once. It makes me want to write.

I don’t take it personally. It has nothing to do with me, or with my book. The book is being taught because it is telling a story that has spiritual resonance at this time in history. It is serving a need, it is doing its healing, it is transmitting light, but I was just the conduit for that light, not the source. I am grateful that the timing was right for my labor to be recognized, and that the readers were ready to hear this story at this time. I am fortunate and blessed to be the flute, but I recognize and acknowledge I am not the music.