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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.

-Sandra Cisneros

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There Are Two Things

Sandra Cisneros

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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.

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You Have To Remember That Writing Itself Is So Solitary. You Start Writing Because You're Lonely.

I Was The Kind Of Person That Was Very Social And Liked To Be With An Entourage And Have Lots Of Parties And Have People Around Me. And Now I Find I Am Much More Satisfied Seeing People One-on-one. I Avoid Crowds, And I Get Really Plagued By People As If They Are Bees Or Something. I Am Talking About My Friends. I Can Only Handle Them One At A Time.

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!

I Usually Say Latina, Mexican-american Or American Mexican, And In Certain Contexts, Chicana, Depending On Whether My Audience Understands The Term Or Not.

One Of The Books That Has Guided Me In The Last Ten Years Of My Life To Help Me To Be That Leader Is The Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh's Being Peace. He's A Vietnamese Monk. He Was Nominated For A Peace Prize By Dr. Martin Luther King.

One Of The Things We Learned From That Panel Is The Way Poor Communities Use A Library Is Very Different From Wealthy Communities. But The Way The Library Books Are Measured Are By How Many Books Are Taken Out. And People In Poor Communities Sometimes Won't Take The Book Out Because They're Afraid To. They're Afraid Of Losing It And Not Being Able To Replace It.

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.

I Can't Stand It When People Say, "if You're Writing A Novel, You Should Read This And That." Because It's Like Giving Someone Another Person's Prescription. How Do You Know That's What They Need?

The House Was Immaculate, As Always, Not A Stray Hair Anywhere, Not A Flake Of Dandruff Or A Crumpled Towel. Even The Roses On The Dining-room Table Held Their Breath. A Kind Of Airless Cleanliness That Always Made Me Want To Sneeze.

What I Recommend Is This: After You've Talked To Everybody, Go Take A Nap! Take A Nap. Your Body Really Needs To Sleep. It's Like Washing Your Face. If You Can't Afford A Three-hour Nap, Do A One-hour Nap. If You Can't Afford A One-hour Nap, Do Half An Hour. If You Can't Afford Half An Hour, Do Fifteen Minutes.

[thich Nhat Hanh] The One That Revolutionized Buddhism. Instead Of Being Monks Just Engaged In Meditation, It Was Active Buddhism. You Went Out And Felt The Ills Of The Community Around You. Instead Of Retreating To A Monastery, You Were Out In The Streets Working. And He's Been A Great Help To Me, Just Reading His Book, So I Don't Feel Helpless About What I Can Do About All The Violence Around Me.

When We Started Publishing, You Had To Be Better Than Good. You Had To Be Excellent. But As Long As People Are Reading, I Don't Care What They're Reading.

It's Difficult For Me To Have A Large Story, A Very Large Story - A Novel Is A Large Story. I'm Used To Writing And Doing These Little Miniature Paintings.

I've Come To Some Balance Now And Calmness. If Anything Happened To Me And I Got Hit By A Bus - I Hope This Doesn't Happen, But If Something Happened - My Body Of Work Is Something I Could Rest On. I Don't Feel, "oh God, I Have To Hurry Up . . ."

Everything Is Holding Its Breath Inside Me. Everything Is Waiting To Explode Like Christmas. I Want To Be All New And Shiny. I Want To Sit Out Bad At Night, A Boy Around My Neck And The Wind Under My Skirt. Not This Way, Every Evening Talking To The Trees, Leaning Out My Window, Imagining What I Can't See.

The Only Reason We Write - Well, The Only Reason Why I Write; Maybe I Shouldn't Generalize - Is So That I Can Find Out Something About Myself. Writers Have This Narcissistic Obsession About How We Got To Be Who We Are. I Have To Understand My Ancestors - My Father, His Mother And Her Mother - To Understand Who I Am. It All Leads Back To The Narcissistic Pleasure Of Discovering Yourself.

When I Was Very Young I Was Reading A Lot Of Latin American Fiction, Which Later Would Be Called "boom Fiction."

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.

I've Been On Television Saying, "¡vamos A La Biblioteca!". That Was Great. Nobody Had Ever Asked Me.

A Lot Of People Mistake The Persona That I Create In Poetry And Fiction With Me. A Lot Of People Claim To Know Me Who Don't Really Know Me. They Know The Work, Or They Know The Persona In The Work, And They Confuse That With Me, The Writer. They Don't Realize That The Persona Is Also A Creation And A Fabrication, A Composite Of My Friends And Myself All Pasted Together.

"you're Next, After The Feather Dancers." And You Had To Get Their Attention, Because Otherwise People Would Go, "oh, A Poet." You Really Have To Learn.

I Didn't Intend To Be Writing - The Writer's Life. I Was Just Writing What Came To Me At The Time, But It Is A Map Of How This Writer Had To Break Many Barriers To Find, Not A Room Of Her Own, But A House Of Her Own.

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.

I Live In A Town That's Two And A Half Hours From The Border. I Know People Who Have Lived In San Antonio For Generations, Sometimes Seven Generations, Their Families Are From There, And They Are Of Mexican Descent, And They've Never Gone Farther Than The Border.

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.

Unconditional Love

There Are Still Many Writers Out In The Bay, Extraordinary Writers Like Gina Valdez, A Poet Who I Just Saw In Portland. We Have Young People Like Eduardo Corral, Who Won The Yale Younger Poets Award. José Antonio Rodriguez, Published By Luis Rodriguez. But There Are Only A Few Of Us Who Are Paid Attention To In New York. There Are Legions Behind Us Who Are Not.

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We Tend To Think Of Orphans As Being The Protagonist Of Stories We Read When We're Kids, And Yet Here You Are: You're An Adult, You're Supposed To Manage, You're Supposed To Get Over It, You're Supposed To Go On With Your Life, And You Feel Like A Lost Child.

If We Were Multilingual, Imagine How Much You Would Learn About Your Own Culture, About The Sensibilities Of What's Important In Your Own Culture.

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.

I Don't Like To Go Into Subways, Because I Always See Them [ Mice]. They Are Like My Naguales [kindred Animal Spirits]. They Follow Me. I Have Literally Stepped Off Of A Plane In Phoenix And Gotten My Bag And Stepped Out On The Curb And They'll Be A Big Desert Rat Walking Right In Front Of Me.

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We Can Have Our Hearts Broken Over So Much More. It Is Important To Recognize The Full Spectrum Of Heartbreak. We Can Be Heartbroken By Lost And By Disappointment. But Heartbreak Is Not Just This Negative Image We See, It's Not This Terrible Experience That Brings No Benefits.

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Mice And Any Rodentia. Guinea Pigs. Even Rabbits, I Can't Stand. Rabbits Are Cousins To Rats. It's A Class Thing. If You Had To Grow Up With Rats Scampering In Your Backyard, Because The City Services Were Cut In Half And The Population In Your Neighborhood Doubled, Then That Also Is Going To Mean That The Flora And Fauna Are Going To Grow As Well. So That's A Part Of It. That's Why I Can't Go To Hindu Countries Where They Respect Rats And Mice, And I Can't Go Camping.

Catholicism Believes In The Virgen De Guadalupe. The Mother Of God Is Worshipped, Especially In Latin America. I Find Her Very Empowering. I Find That The Virgen De Guadalupe Allowed Me To Return To Parts Of My Upbringing I Had Disregarded.

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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.

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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.

I Have To Say My Favorite Stories Are Ghost Stories. I Don't Like To See These Made-up Monster Films Or Scary Films With Ghosts. It Doesn't Do Anything To Me. But A Real Ghost Story That Someone Tells Me, That I Like.

Even My Mom. I Have To Tell Her, "if You Want A Snack, Don't Go To Bed With Potato Chips. Eat A Handful Of Pistachios And A Handful Of Dates."

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There's A Lot Of Things That Haven't Been Communicated To Our Communities. I Didn't Know These Things Myself. I Didn't Know That If You Ate Cheap Food, It Was Like Buying Cheap Gasoline, And There Was A Reason Why After An Hour You Get Headaches, Or Youhypoglycemic.

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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.

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.

Write About What Makes You Different.

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.

If You're Going To Write About The River, You've Got To Get In.

I Never Know What Something Is Going To Be Until It Emerges From The Womb And You See The Crown Of Its Head And Then You See It Pushing Its Way Up. So In My Life If Another Book Wants To Be Born It's Not For Me To Choose.

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.

I Was Raised A Catholic, But With Very Liberal Parents, So I Had To Find My Spirituality. I've Been Looking For It Since I Was A Child. I Would Find It In Pieces Of Art, Music, Flowers, Trees. Now I've Come Full Circle Finding God In Clouds, Flowers, And Trees.

I Was Interested In Cross-pollinating The Two. I Thought There Was Something Lovely In The Little Vignette Forms. I Wanted To Explore That.

You Don't Have To Be The Specialist On Everything. You Can Try To Inform Yourself.

I Learned When I Was A Student In Connecticut. I Had An Italian-american Teacher Who Gave Me Classes For A Week, And Then Said, "okay, You're Ready." And I Wasn't Ready. I Didn't Know How To Drive!. But He Knew The Policeman Who Gave The Test. And That's How I Got Through.

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.

Every Writer I Admire Is My Teacher. If You Look At It, And If You Care To Read Carefully Enough And To Read And Reread A Text, You Teach Yourself Something About Craft.

I Feel Like I Am In A Box Of Bees When I Am In A Room With Lots Of People And I'm Just Looking For The Door. I Find Myself Getting More And More Agoraphobic As Time Goes On.

You'll Change. You'll See. Wait Till You Meet Mr. Right.

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.

I Think One Of The Great Primordial Fears We Have Once We Become Conscious Of Our Aloneness As Children Is The Fear Of Losing Our Mother. We Have That From The Moment We Realize We Can Lose Her Just In The Supermarket. As A Child, It Was More Terrifying Than Arithmetic.

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.

I Think That It's Not Enough To Do The Little Band-aid Things Of Having Celebrities Come And Read To Children. Not That We Don't Need To Read To Children, But We Don't Need To Just Do It One Time And Feel Good About It. I Think We Need To Think Long Range About Poor People And Their Relationship To Libraries.

Like All Guests, After A Fortnight, Grief Is Best Beyond The Door.

Every Book Takes You To The Terror, That Terrible Place Of Possible Failure.

I Think There's Some Great Stuff Coming. I Do Feel That. I Think We Have Reached Our Harlem Renaissance.

Heartbreak Allows Us To Also Experience Joy And Love But You Have To Walk Through Heartbreak To Even Know What Joy Is. Heartbreak Is A Constant And It Is Even Necessary. It Allows Us The Opportunity Of Introspection And Exploration. Those Processes Are What Is Necessary To Write And Engage In The Arts.

As An Artist, I Have To Be The Ambassador Of Everything.

Revenge Only Engenders Violence, Not Clarity And True Peace. I Think Liberation Must Come From Within.

Even Though It's Hard To Believe, But People Who Know Me Really Well Know I'm Shy. I Have To Go Past That Fear.

Some People Need Flowers, Some People Need Dandelions. It's Medicine, It's What You Need At That Time In Your Life.

People Like To Blame Mexican Food, But Look At What's Happening Globally, Look At All The Fast Foods And Products Filled With Trans Fat. Before The Mexican Revolution, A Hundred Years Ago, People Were Eating What Now Macrobiotics Tells Us To Eat, Corn, Black Beans, Rice. That's What People Were Eating - And Chile Peppers. That's A Healthy Diet.

Sometimes I Feel I Can't Quite Master My Written And Spoken Spanish, Because I'm Too Much A Student Of English. I Would Need Another Lifetime To Learn It.

You Know How They Say, "find Your Voice"? That's Your Voice, In Your Pajamas. And It Doesn't Mean That You're Going To Publish It Or Print It Or People Are Going To See You In Your Pajamas. It Just Means You Are Going To Construct The Foundation In Your Pajamas, In That Voice.

Bricks Are Crumbling In Places, And The Front Door Is So Swollen You Have To Push Hard To Get In

If You Know Two Cultures And Two Languages, That Intermediate Place, Where The Two Don't Perfectly Meet, Is Really Interesting.

You Meditate And Then You Can Put On Your Pajamas, Or You Can Imagine You're Wearing Your Pajamas, And You Talk About Your Piece Of Writing In The Language You Would Use If You Were Wearing Your Pajamas And You Were Seated At A Table With Your Very Good Friend. And You Wouldn't Have To Get All Dressed Up Or Clean Up The Table.

I Don't Think I'll Write A Large Novel Again Because It Was Like Being In Jail For Me. Even Though That's The Funniest Book I've Ever Written, It Was The Saddest Period Of My Life.

You Can't Erase What You Know. You Can't Forget Who You Are.

I Feel The Fear Touches On Something Deeper. A Sense Perhaps Of, "my Life Is Speeding Past Me And I Can't Get A Handle On It."

The Comments You'll Get From A Filmmaker About Your Performance Are Going To Be Very Different. My Writing Workshop Is About Mixing It Up, Cross-pollinating, Not Only In Genres But In Occupations.

Everything That Is Most Mine Belongs To Everyone Now.

I Know There Are A Lot Of Women Who Are Afraid Of Driving On Highways.

I Think That We Need To Measure How We Give Dollars To Libraries By Need. And The Communities That Are Poor, In My Opinion, Should Get More Because You Have To Do More Outreach.

I Began Writing As An Experimental Writer.

You Get Good At Being By Yourself And You're Condemned To A Life Sentence Of Solitude. You Think, "wait A Minute! I Should Have Been A Tap Dancer Or Something". But In My Life, I Feel Like I Take My Stories To People Orally.

That's All You Have To Ask From Yourself Writing A Book. That It's The Best You Can Do And That You Did It Without Any Ego Involved And That You Did It For Somebody Else. That's The Best You Can Do.

[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.

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?"

Why Don't We Have People Like Thich Nhat Hanh Or Marshall Rosenberg And Nelson Mandela Solving Violent Situations In A Peaceful Way?

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.

I'm From Chicago, So The Chicago Working-class Poets Still Mean A Great Deal To Me.

I Hope I'm Not Just Looked As A Writer That Is Popular But As A Writer Of Literary Value.

My Idea Was Always To Start With A Small Press And Then Move Up To A National Press. I Had Those Goals For My Career From The Time I Was A Very Young Woman. I Wanted To Win A Local Award, Then I Wanted A State Or National Award. Small Press, Big Press. Some Women Fantasize About Their Weddings, Their Husbands, And Children. I Fantasized About What I Wanted To Accomplish With My Books.

Packing Is Important Because A Lot Of Times I Have To Go Places Where I Have To Be In Four Different Climates In Three Weeks. For Example, Bosnia, Ireland, Rome. Different Parts Of Italy. You Have To Pack And Get It Down To A Science.

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.

I Have To Understand What My Strengths And Limitations Are, And Work From A True Place. I Try To Do This As Best I Can While Still Protecting My Writer Self, Which More Than Ever Needs Privacy.

When You Have A Flourishing Of The Economy You Have A Flourishing Of The Arts.

You Can Never Have Too Much Sky . You Can Fall Asleep And Wake Up Drunk On Sky, And Sky Can Keep You Safe When You Are Sad. Here There Is Too Much Sadness And Not Enough Sky. Butterflies Too Are Few And So Are Flowers And Most Things That Are Beautiful. Still, We Take What We Can Get And Make The Best Of It.

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.

When You Have Your Heart Broken Wide, You Are Also Open To Things Of Beauty As Well As Things Of Sadness. Once People Are Not Here Physically, The Spiritual Remains, We Still Connect, We Can Communicate, We Can Give And Receive Love And Forgiveness. There Is Love After Someone Dies.

I Was Reading Emily Dickinson And Edwin Arlington Robinson, But These Weren't The Poets That Influenced Me. I Think Gwendolyn Brooks Influenced Me Because She Wrote About Chicago, And She Wrote About Poor People. And She Influenced Me In My Life By Giving Me A Blurb. I Would See Her In Action, And She Listened To Every Single Person. She Didn't Say, "oh, I'm Tired. I Gotta Go." She Was There, And Present, With Every Single Person. She's One Of The Great Teachers.

I Can't Do A Linear Novel. I'm Just Going To Write What I Need To Write.

There Was A Time When I Used To Go To Mexico Every Year. But Then Mexico Changed A Lot - Between 1995 And 2005, Mexico Changed A Lot.

We Have All This Courage As Writers, But Then There's This Fear.

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.

I Feel That I Can Teach My Listener About A New Word They Can Use Too.

One Of The Things I Used To Dream Of Is That If I Could Just Be Funny Like Red Skelton, If I Could Be A Comedian Like Red Skelton - That's What I Watched On Tv - Then Maybe I Would Have Friends. I Just Remember That If I Told Stories To My Friends, They Listened. And In My Family, With Nine People Talking At The Same Time, It's Really Hard To Get People To Listen To You. We Were All Craving Attention.

Post 9/11, We've Seen Such Disastrous Policies On The Border. I Live Two And A Half Hours Away From The Border, And I've Seen Changes For The Communities There. I Feel Like It's An Occupied Zone. We're Losing Our Rights, And Both Sides Of The Border Are Terrified. The Mexican Population And The U.s. Population Are United In Fear.

What Do We Call Our Harlem Renaissance? Maybe In The Future, It Won't Be Just Latino, Maybe It'll Be More Multi-multi, Because, You Know, People Are Such Fusions Now, Of So Many Different Cultures.

I Usually Meditate And I Call My Spirit Allies - Anyone In The Spirit World That I've Got Connections With. Even In The Spirit World You Need Connections!

I Was Silent As A Child, And Silenced As A Young Woman; I Am Taking My Lumps And Bumps For Being A Big Mouth, Now, But Usually From Those Whose Opinion I Don't Respect.

I Don't Know What The Definition Of A Short Story Is, And I Don't Even Care To Answer That Question. That's Something Somebody In Academia Would Think About. I Just Want To Tell A Story, And If People Listen, And If It Stays With You, It's A Story.

It's What's Available To The Poor Communities. They Do Buy Healthy Stuff, You Know, But The Lettuce Is Usually Iceberg Lettuce And To Get Any Taste, They Have To Use All That Ranch Dressing.

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.

When You Edit, You Imagine Your Enemy Is Seated On The Other Side Of The Table. Your Enemy! And Your Enemy Is Going To Read That With A Viciousness, Because He Knows Where You Didn't Work On It. He's Going To Shake It And Really Aim For That Jugular. So You Are Going To Polish, And Revise, And Rewrite, And Cut Out, And Shape It, So That Your Enemy Has No Place To Grip It. That's How You Revise.

That's What You Need For Your Writing - To Learn How To Be Present, Learn How To Be Calm. So Take That Nap, Do That Meditation.

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."

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 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. Or The Comments You'll Get From A Filmmaker About Your Performance Are Going To Be Very Different. My Writing Workshop Is About Mixing It Up, Cross-pollinating, Not Only In Genres But In Occupations.

I Wanted To Write Something In A Voice That Was Unique To Who I Was. And I Wanted Something That Was Accessible To The Person Who Works At Dunkin Donuts Or Who Drives A Bus, Someone Who Comes Home With Their Feet Hurting Like My Father, Someone Whos Busy And Has Too Many Children, Like My Mother.

The Devil Knows More From Experience Than From Being The Devil

I Think There's A Rule That Once You Want To Live Somewhere, You Can't Find A Job.

The Border Between The Dead And The Living, If You're Mexican, Doesn't Exist. The Dead Are Part Of Your Life.

People Want You To Be The Ambassador Of Everything. This Happens To Me Especially When I Go To Europe. I Have To Be The Ambassador Of Everything. I Learned This From Elena Poniatowska - Intelligent Woman, Great Lady, One Of My Heroes, One Of My Spiritual Mentors, I Love Her. Someone Is In This Big Museum And They Ask Her, "elenita, What Do You Think About Mexican Women . . ." And She Says, "i Haven't A Clue!"

We Are Told By Media - Books, Television, Reality Shows - That Heartbreak Is This Terrible Thing And Yet We Should Seek It. We're Told That Heartbreak Is All About Love And We Should Just Go After That High Over And Over Again. We Are Told It Is Healthy To Be Addicted To This Kind Of Behavior And The Highs Associated With Love. But, That's Not All What Heartbreak Is.

I Was Raised In Chicago, So Always Used Latina. It's What My Father And Brothers Called Ourselves, When We Meant The Entire Spanish-speaking Community Of Chicago.

There's No Perfect Place, There's No Wonderful Utopia.

I Just Feel That The East And The West Are Two Different Worlds. I Sometimes Get Saddened When I See That Very Few Writers Of Color Are Published Or Reviewed In East Coast Presses And Magazines.

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.

[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."

I'm Just As Unhappy About San Antonio As I Was About Chicago. If You're Unhappy About Certain Things, You're Unhappy Everywhere.

Mom Used To Walk With Me For Something Like Two Or Three Miles To Get To The Day-old Bakery. They Had Those Machines Where You Buy Doughnuts, Those Vending Machines With The Long Johns And Doughnuts. We Would Buy Those Bagels And Pastries Because That Was Our Treat. And Come Back With Shopping Bags Of These Sweets, And Who Knows What Was In It? That Was What We Could Afford That Could Feed That Many People.

You Know How Women Have This Clock When They Want To Have A Baby? I Had This Clock Where I Wanted To Win A National Award By Thirty, Be At A Big Press By Thirty-five. I Was Always Working With These Self-driven Goals.

I Always Have To Have Sweet And Salty. I Know Some Of You Are Going To Say, "oh, I Tried Dates. I Hate Them." That's Probably Because You Had The Ones That Were On The Shelf For Three Years. Go To Some Healthy Place And Get The Fresh Ones, And You Will Just Love Them. You'll Start Eating Them And Think They're So Good.

My Spanish Is A Daughter's Spanish. I Write, But My Spanish Really Is Very Limited.

I Learn Through Listening And Watching Other Performers That Are Very Good, Like Denise Chávez, Dorothy Allison.

Imagine Americans Who Go To Paris. Why Would You Want To Go Where Someone's Going To Disparage You? Why Would You Go Anywhere Where They Treat You Bad? Well, That's How It Is For Us To Go To Mexico. You Have To Be On Your Guard, Because I Think The Mexicans Are Harder On The Mexicans, The Mexican-americans. They Don't See Us As Mexican. I Think Part Of It's A Class Issue And A Color Issue. We're More Connected To Their Servants, So What Are We Doing Staying At A Nice Hotel? There's A Kind Of Shame.

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.

I Feel Comfortable In Spanish, I Chat Like A Parrot, But I Don't Have The Confidence In Spanish That I Do In English.

To This Day, On My Cheat Days From My Diet, Which Are New Year's Eve And My Birthday, I Buy Luxury Foods That Are Very Indicative Of My Class.

Get Yourself Empty In The Eastern Sense. Not In The Western Sense. In The Western Sense When We Feel Empty We Feel Lonely, Miserable, But In The Eastern Sense - "i'm So Empty, Because I'm Filled With Everything, And I'm Connected To Everything." It's Very Energizing. You Want That Kind Of Emptiness, Whatever You Have To Do To Get Yourself Quiet.

I Think My Family And Closest Friends Are Learning About My Need To Withdraw, And I Am Learning How To Restore And Store My Energy To Both Serve The Community To The Best Of My Ability And To Serve My Writer's Heart.

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.

You Can Never Have Too Much Sky.

Flipping A Coin

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.

My Mom Was A Frustrated Woman, Like So Many Unhappy Women Who Didn't Get The Opportunities They Wanted.

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.

I Think Diseases Have No Eyes. They Pick With A Dizzy Finger Anyone, Just Anyone.

If You Can't Fall Asleep, Learn How To Meditate. I Would Recommend You Listen To A Beautiful Tape Called Spiritual Power, Spiritual Practice [energy Evaluation Meditations For Morning And Evening, 1998]. It Was The One That Got Me Out Of My Writer's Block When I Was Writing Caramelo. It's By Carolyn Myss.

Now I Feel Life Is Really Short And I Have To Take Care Of Things.

I Don't Really Think Our Government At Heart Wants Peace. So I Urge You, Write To Mrs. Laura Bush, Because She Reads.

There Are A Few Of The Authors That I Think Have Made A Great Big Impact On My Life. The Way I Used To Do Things When I Was Younger Was More About Being Outrageous, And There Was A Lot Of Ego Involved In That.

But I Deal With This By Meditating And By Understanding I've Been Put On The Planet To Serve Humanity. I Have To Remind Myself To Live Simply And Not Overindulge, Which Is A Constant Battle In A Material World.

I Was Reading All These Male Writers Who Were Doing Wild And Wonderful Things. It Gave Me Permission To Experiment.

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.

I Lose Things. I Write Things And They Disappear From My Desk, My Life. I Move A Lot. I Wanted To Gather Them And Put Them Under One Roof, Under One Cover, So I Could Document My Life In A Series Of Snapshots.

The Beauty Of Literature Is You Allow Readers To See Things Through Other Peoples Eyes. All Good Books Do This.

Before You Speak, Get Very Quiet, Do The Meditation, Say, "use Me As A Channel For What Needs To Get Said To This Community. This Community Needs To Hear Something Very Important That I'm The Only Person In The Room Who Can Say It. Please Help Open Me So That I'm Not Frightened And Speak Through Me. Let Me Be That Channel So That I Can Help Heal." You Make Yourself So Humble That You Really Are Like A Flute And That Music That Comes Out Comes From El Corazón. All The People You're Connected To From That Light That We Call Love.

The Truth Has A Strange Way Of Following You, Of Coming Up To You And Making You Listen To What It Has To Say.

My Friend, Dennis Mathis, Was Reading Eastern European And Japanese Experimental Writers, And I Brought The Latin American Writers To His Attention, So We Exchanged Books And Bounced Off One Another.

I've Always Read Broadly: Literary Fiction, Sci-fi, Fantasy, Chick Lit, Historical, Dystopian, Nonfiction, Memoir. I've Even Read Westerns. I Prefer Female Protagonists.

[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.

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.

I Know The American Library Association Has Models For Working With The Poor. They Do Have That, And I Think That We Really Need To Put Our Efforts - If We Want To Think Long-range And Invest In The Community So That We Don't Have To, You Know, Invest In Prisons - Into Making A Change, Because I Know That The Library Can Make A Change In A Life, Because It Made A Change In Mine.

Something I Always Tell Students Is, When You're Writing Something, You Want To Write The First Draft And You Want It To Come Out Easily In The Beginning. If You're Afraid To Say What You Really Have To Say, You Stammer. When You're Thinking Of Your Listener, That's When You Start Stuttering And It's Just Because You're Nervous That Your Listener Is Passing Judgment.

Thinking Of You

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.

One Way To Get Very Humble Is To Dedicate The Work You're Going To Do To Your Community.

People Like To Blame Mexican Food, But Look At What's Happening Globally, Look At All The Fast Foods And Products Filled With Trans Fat. Before The Mexican Revolution, A Hundred Years Ago, People Were Eating What Now Macrobiotics Tells Us To Eat, Corn, Black Beans, Rice. That's What People Were Eating - And Chile Peppers. That's A Healthy Diet. And Also They Ate A Lot Of Vegetables.

You Know, You Want To Be Outrageous When You're Young, So All The Young People Say, "oooh . . ." Now My Tactics Are Different.

The Experience Taught Me To Be Present In The Real Buddhist Sense Of Paying Attention To The Moment.

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.

Poor Neighborhoods

I Find Myself Using Spanish Words Much More Now That I'm Older, And I Guess I Have The Authority To Do It In Public Spaces In Ways That I Felt I Couldn't When I Was Teaching Here Fifteen Years Ago.

I Want To Write An Essay Called "fear Of Mexico," Because I Always Feel Like Mexico's This Lover That Never Writes To Me.

I Have This Great Fear Of Mexico City. I Won't Go To Mexico City Unless Someone Meets Me At The Airport And Is With Me. I Just Feel Very Vulnerable There.

Believe Me, That Nap Is Better Than Sitting There For Three Hours And Nothing's Coming. I've Learned That Even If I've Slept Nine Hours And I Just Finished Breakfast, If I Feel Sleepy When I'm In Front Of That Computer, I'll Take A Nap. And It Really Does Help.

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.

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