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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.

-Sandra Cisneros

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When I Was At

Sandra Cisneros

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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.

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I Am Not In Touch With Other Writers. I Don't Have Very Much Contact With Other Writers. I Don't Get Invited To These Things Or I Don't Go To Them. I Hate Panels. I Speak To Librarians And To Conferences Of English Teachers. That's What I Do: Teachers And Librarians. And High School Kids.

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.

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

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.

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.

Thinking About You

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.

One Way To Get Very Humble Is To Dedicate The Work You're Going To Do To Your Community. And By Community I Mean That Community You Have A Special Vision For, That Only You See, That No One Else In A Room Sees. That Special Community In Pain, That Through A Pain You've Suffered, You're Able To Have That Vision, That Super-ray Vision.

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.

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 Always Tell People That I Became A Writer Not Because I Went To School But Because My Mother Took Me To The Library. I Wanted To Become A Writer So I Could See My Name In The Card Catalog.

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.

Each Book Gets Harder, Each Book Gets Harder And Harder. I Always Feel Like Crying When I Have To Write.

That's Why It's Important To Be Multilingual, Because It Teaches You So Much About Your Own Language.

There's All Kinds Of Ways To Wean Yourself Off Of Sugar - Because It Is Like An Addiction.

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.

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."

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

My Feminism Is Humanism, With The Weakest Being Those Who I Represent, And That Includes Many Beings And Life Forms, Including Some Men.

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

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. [...] 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.

Thinking About You

Judging Yourself

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.

It's So Good For Your Health To Take Those Naps. I Don't Know Why People Brag That They Sleep Five Hours. I'd Be Ashamed. I'm Proud That I Sleep Nine Hours.

For Example, There's No Word Emocionó In English, So I Have To Say, "you, You Really Emotioned Me," It's More Precise, Even Though It Sounds Odd. "my Father Emotioned Me." Or "that Performance Really Emotioned To Me."

When Your Writing Is Unselfconscious, When It Comes From Your Heart, That's When It's Powerful.

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 Realize That It's Like Spices In The Kitchen. I Need That Turmeric. I'm Sorry, But Cinnamon Isn't Going To Substitute . I Feel That I Can Teach My Listener About A New Word They Can Use Too. "well, What Words Are Part Of My Own Community, Even If I'm Monolingual, That I'm Not Allowing Myself To Use In A Public Sphere?"

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.

I'm Learning A Lot By Reading Teachers Like Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron. They Teach Me Because I Feel Like I Have A Responsibility To The Communities That I Speak To.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

The Stories Are What No One Wants To Talk About. So You Make Up A Story Because No One Is Going To Tell You The Truth.

The Older I Get, The More I'm Conscious Of Ways Very Small Things Can Make A Change In The World. Tiny Little Things, But The World Is Made Up Of Tiny Matters, Isn't It?

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.

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 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!

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.

If You're Poor, Potato Chips Are The Food Of Life For You. It's The Caviar.

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.

If Educators Were Really Understanding Of That, They'd Say, "you Know What? Forget About Bilingual, We're Going To Do Multilingual Education." So Children Are Ready For The New Millennium. We're Way Behind Compared To Countries In Europe. 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 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.

Believe It Or Not, Mexican Cooking, For Those Of You Who Have Not Gone Farther South Than Taco Bell, Uses A Lot Of Vegetables. But Those Vegetables Were Not Brought Here, Like Corn Mushrooms, Huitlacoche, Or Squash Blossoms.

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.

My Idea Of A Meal, If I Was Hungry, Was To Open A Bag Of Potato Chips.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

I Try To Be As Honest About What I See And To Speak Rather Than Be Silent, Especially If It Means I Can Save Lives, Or Serve Humanity.

I Want To Thank You, Especially Those People Who Are Agnostic Or Atheist. I Don't Mean Any Offense By The Things I Said Of The Spirit World. Thank You For Allowing Me To Speak About The Spiritual, Because I Can't Talk About My Life Or Writing Without Mentioning That.

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.

I Have To Take Care Of The House, And The Dogs, And The Macondo Board Meetings, All Those E-mails, The Letters That Are Going To Fans. And You've Got To Pay Bills. These Things Eat Up Your Time. You Have To Prepare And Pack To Go On That Trip. Then When You Come Back You Have To File All That Stuff, Answer All That Mail, And That's Not Even Washing The Clothes Or Any Of That. So It Takes As Many Days As I've Been Away To Come Back To Normal And To Get Quiet.

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

Marshall Rosenberg Talks About How We Can Create Peace In The Communities We Work With. He's Been Traveling To Warring Nations To Create Peace Within Those Countries.

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.

You Know, We Should Have Cards Like The Deaf Have. "can't Talk, I'm Writing Today."

When I Was Writing Caramelo The Last Couple Of Years, A Sixty-hour Work Week Was Normal. And Now I'm Lucky If I Have Eight Hours.

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 Think Of Reading As Like A Medicine Cabinet.

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

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 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 Don't Close Myself To The Possibility Of Someplace Outside The United States, But It Would Have To Be Someplace With An Indigenous Community, Because That's Where I Feel At Home.

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.

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 Had A Mother Who Walked To The Library With Me, And You Can't Walk To A Lot Of Libraries In San Antonio Because - Guess What? - There Are No Sidewalks, Except In The Neighborhoods. And They're Across Big Boulevards, And It's So Hot, You Can't Even Walk To The Corner. So Things Like That Affect How Children Can Get To Libraries. So There Are A Lot Of Things Involved.

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.

I Think The Erotic Is Very Spiritual, And I Never See That Spiritual Dimension When You Look At Collections Of Erotica. That's Always Missing For Me.

[writing Is Like Fishing]. You Don't Bow Because You Made The Fish. That's The Difference. If You Know That, Then You Bow For Your Labor.you Crafted, You Worked, You Put In Those Hours So That You Could Catch That Fish. But You Didn't Make That Fish. You Just Caught The Fish. That Will Help You Stay Humble And Bow For The Right Reason And Be Very Lucid About The Work You Do.

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

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.

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.

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

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

I Learned From The Macarturos. I Had Never Been At A Table With A Labor Organizer And A Playwright And A Performance Artist And An Anthropologist And A Human Rights Lawyer. Usually At Most Gatherings, It's All Writers. But Suddenly I Was At A Table With All These Different People And I Learned From Each Of Them, Learned From The Work They're Doing, Learned New Ways To Solve My Problems.

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.

My Book Would Come Out In One Language, Then It Would Come Out In Another Language, Then It Would Come Out In One City, One Read, And I Was Always Being Called Away From My Desk.

This Is The Age Of Fear And So Many Of Us Feel Afraid To Speak Out About What Has Happened To Our Lives In The Wake Of 9/11. Television Promotes The World As A Scary Place For The United States And This Justifies Peeling Away Every Element Of Privacy We Had Before. The Media Is Monopolized So We Don't Even Hear A Lot Of Dissent About This New Era.

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 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 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.

How Can Art Make A Difference In The World?

Making A Difference

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.

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.

I'm Most Tired After I Read, After I've Just Done A Performance, But What I Try To Do Is To Fuel And Eat A Really Healthy Meal Before I Perform. I Want To Have Enough Energy To Talk To That Last Person.

I Look At Thich Nhat Hanh And I Look At Marshall Rosenberg, And They're More Concerned About The Long Range. And That Long Range Means That You Have To Sit Down With People Who Don't Think Like You. I Want To Reach People Who Don't Think Like Me.

When I Lost My Father, I Thought I Learned About Grief And Transition. However, Nobody Tells You What It's Like To Lose Your Mother. They Don't Tell You That You're Going To Feel Like An Orphan At Whatever Age You Are As An Adult.

We Changed It To Emocionó, The Way You Say In Spanish, "to Emotion Me" [to Be Moved]. That, As Opposed To "haunt." We Wanted The Feeling Of Sadness And Grief And Obsession, So We Used Emocionó.

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.

Being On A Highway, All That Speed And Aggression, Is Very Terrifying To Me.

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.

As People Who Are Women, Who Are Indigenous And Live On Indigenous Lands, We Know, And This Is Something I Understand The Older I Get, That They Don't Visit The Same Way The Postman May Visit But They Do Visit. They Visit In Ways That Our Modern Society Often Disregards And Considers Immaterial Or Unreal.

The Mexico - United States Border Was Always Porous. People Have Been Going And Coming Back Since Before The Spaniards Arrived. Now We're Seeing Communities Who Have Family Members On The Other Side Very Frightened. I Feel Saddened For Those Families Divided By Violence. The Whole Border Area Is Under Siege.

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.

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.

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?"

What I've Learned Is, If I Have To Go Out And Speak, The Best Way To Get People's Attention Is To Tell Them A Story, Tell Them A Story That Came From My Corazón.

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

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

The World We Live In Is A House On Fire And The People We Love Are Burning.

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.

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.

To Tell You The Truth, I Think It's About That We Shouldn't Get Our Driver's Licenses Till Real Late In Life.

I Remember When They Started Publishing Latino Fiction Years Ago. You Had To Be Really Good To Get Published. Now You Don't Have To Be That Good.

I Think I Didn't Know What I Was Creating, As Much As I Knew What I Didn't Want To Do. And I Didn't Want My Mother's Life. She Was An Unhappy, Frustrated Artist Who Always Dreamed Of A Life That Was Never Going To Be Hers.

Mexicans Don't Think Of Ghosts As Haunting You.

Perhaps The Greatest Challenge Has Been Trying To Keep My Time To Myself And My Private Life Private In Order To Do My Job. Everything That Is Most Mine Belongs To Everyone Now.

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.

Writing Poetry Helps Me To Write My Fiction; Each Thing Helps The Other.

I Had To Learn Quick, Because I Was Performing In Cinco De Mayo Festivals With Babies Crying And People Lifting Their Beers, And You Know The Feather Dancers Would Come, And They'd Say, "what Are You, A Poet? You're Next".

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.

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 Looking At A Lot Of Experimental Writers, And I Was Very Intrigued By Short-short Fiction, Writers Who Would Write Little Things, What I Call Buttons Now, Little Vignettes.

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.

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.

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.

The Border Between The Dead And The Living, If You're Mexican, Doesn't Exist. The Dead Are Part Of Your Life. Like My Dad, Who's Not Here, But He's Here.that's Why There's The Day Of The Dead. There's Such A Connection With The Dead.

I Am Obsessed With Becoming A Woman Comfortable In Her Skin.

Becoming A Woman

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.

Don't Be Afraid To Say What You Don't Know, And Speak For What You Do Know. Say, "i Can't Speak For All Latinas, But I Can Speak For Me And Tell You Very, Very Honestly."

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

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 Prefer To Go To The Little Towns Now, Because In Little Towns People Are Kind. I Like Going To Tepotzlán.

The Ego's Blocking The Light From Coming.

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 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.

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.

Write About What Makes You Different.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Have To Say That The Traditional Role Is Kind Of A Myth. I Think The Traditional Mexican Woman Is A Fierce Woman.

[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."

The Writer Denise Chávez Comments On Poor Food And What You Associate With Luxury Food Items. In Fact, She Wrote A Whole Book Called A Taco Testimony, And Though The Title Sounds Light, It's A Heavy Book. It's About Being Working Class And What Kind Of Food Is Available To You That's Cheap.

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.

"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.

The Devil Knows More From Experience Than From Being The Devil

She Became Politically Conscious Thanks To Studs Terkel And The Radio. She Started Reading All The Books We Brought Home From College And Was A Great Fan Of Noam Chomsky. She Was A Real Lefty And Yet Was Not Able To Meet Her Dream Of Becoming An Artist. She Got Drafted Into Motherhood Big Time - Seven Kids - And That Wasn't The Life That She Had Planned. So She Opened The Path So That I Could Be The Artist That She Wanted To Be.

So How Are You Supposed To Learn How To Drive With This Guy Yapping At You? My Brothers Were The Ones Who Got To Practice. So When You Have To Get On The Expressway, You're Afraid. That's What I Think. That's Why I Take Back Routes On Two-lane Highways.

The Thoughts Of Letting Go Of Everything I Love Overwhelms Like A Tsunami Of Sorrow.

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.

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

We Women Shouldn't Get Our Driver's Licenses Till Real Late In Life.

One Press Account Said I Was An Overnight Success. I Thought That Was The Longest Night I've Ever Spent.

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.

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.

There Are Many Latino Writers As Talented As I Am, But Because We Are Published Through Small Presses, Our Books Don't Count. We Are Still The Illegal Aliens Of The Literary World.

You Know That You Wouldn't Take A Baby On A Plane Without Diapers, So When You Leave Your House, Take Care Of You, Like You Would A Baby. Don't Leave Your House Without Packing Some Healthy Things.

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

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.

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

If You Start Thinking About Who's Going To Read It [you're Writing], Or What Grade Will You Get, Or Is It Going To Win That Award, Or Are You Going To Get Into This Graduate Program, You're Blocking The Light, And The Light Is That Guidance And Love We Get When We Open Up Our Hearts And Are Guided By Our Higher Selves, Or God, Or The Buddha Lupe [buddha And The Virgin Of Guadalupe Fused Together, As They Are In The Tattoo On Sandra's Right Arm], Or Whatever You Believe In, Or Love.

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.

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 Began Writing As An Experimental Writer.

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

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.

You Don't Want Somebody Who Doesn't Know His Own Heart, Do You? You'll Find Someone Who's Brave Enough To Love You. Someday. One Day. Not Today.

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

My Trainer Taught Me, Because He's Iranian, And That's A Beautiful Snack [pistachios]. I Have Some With Me, Actually, In My Bag. You Could Eat That On A Plane Instead Of The Salted Nuts. And A Serving Size A Day Is The Size Of Your Hand, Not The Size Of Your Head!

I Would Drive On Streets That Were One-way And Think, "why Are They All Honking At Me?"

When I Was A Child, I Was Very Shy, And There's Still A Part Of Me That's Very Shy.

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.

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.

[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.

[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.

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?

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

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

When I Say What I'm Reading, This Is What I Need. I Know The Ills That Plague Me.

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."

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

Every Single House Has Had Death Visit.

I Don't Want To Blame Anybody, But I Just Want To Tell You That The Process Of Writing Is Antisocial, So On The Days That You Have Something Really Important To Write, Go From Lying Down Directly To Your Notepad Or Your Computer. Do Not Talk.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I Am One Who Leaves The Table Like A Man, Without Putting Back The Chair Or Picking Up The Plate

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