Sandra Cisneros is a famous writer recognized globally with multiple awards and honors. Notably, President Obama awarded her the National Medal of Arts in 2016.
Her bestselling book, “The House on Mango Street”, has sold over six million copies and been translated into 20+ languages.
Cisneros, the daughter of Mexican parents, began writing poetry at ten.
After earning degrees from Loyola University of Chicago and the University of Iowa, she pursued a career in teaching and writing.
She has published novels, poetry, short stories and children’s books in both English and Spanish, garnering numerous accolades and fellowships, including from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur Foundation.
Cisneros also actively supports the writing community through foundations and has received honorary degrees from various universities.
Let’s deep dive into the best quotes by Sandra Cisneros.
Top 10 Sandra Cisneros Quotes
Mexico is only a memory of childhood safety. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
You can never have too much sky. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
I am obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in her skin. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Everything that is most mine belongs to everyone now. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
You can’t erase what you know. You can’t forget who you are. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
The world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
The devil knows more from experience than from being the devil. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
I’m not afraid to say what I’m afraid of. Does that make me fearless? ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Even if you don’t believe in God, you have to believe in love. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
I think of reading as like a medicine cabinet. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Best Sandra Cisneros Quotes
I have to say that the traditional role is kind of a myth. I think the traditional Mexican woman is a fierce woman. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
I’m filled with a new joy mixed with old grief. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
You were given that pain and that vision because you have something to do with it. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
There’s no perfect place, there’s no wonderful utopia. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
The TSA tears through your bags at the airport and the NSA watches what books you buy and what you say over the telephone and online. It doesn’t feel like anything is private anymore. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Inspirational Sandra Cisneros Quotes
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
The more you speak more languages, the more you understand about yourself. It’s like being blind. You aren’t less of a person, but you’re missing out on wonderful things. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
I find that I have to become more and more reclusive and pick and choose when I am public and when I am private. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Famous Sandra Cisneros Quotes
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
The truth has a strange way of following you, of coming up to you and making you listen to what it has to say. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
I don’t think the church likes chingonas. I don’t think the state likes chingonas! And fathers definitely do not like chingonas. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
The beauty of literature is you allow readers to see things through other people’s eyes. All good books do this. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
I wish somebody had told me love does not die, that we can continue to receive and give love after death. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Writing poetry helps me to write my fiction; each thing helps the other. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
I usually say Latina, Mexican-American or American Mexican, and in certain contexts, Chicana, depending on whether my audience understands the term or not. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
‘Hispanic’ is English for a person of Latino origin who wants to be accepted by the white status quo. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Popular Sandra Cisneros Quotes
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
The thoughts of letting go of everything I love overwhelms like a tsunami of sorrow. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Maybe all pain in the world requires poetry. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Even if we don’t know if God exists, we can be certain love exists, because its power transcends death. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
I think diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Like all guests, after a fortnight, grief is best beyond the door. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Unique Sandra Cisneros Quotes
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Generally if you’re a daughter in a Mexican family, no one wants to tell you anything; they tell you the healthy lies about your family. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
I’m a witch woman – high on tobacco and holy water. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Revenge only engenders violence, not clarity and true peace. I think liberation must come from within. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
I don’t see any kind of mirror of power, male power, that is, as a form of liberation. I don’t believe in an eye for an eye. I don’t believe this is truly freedom. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Inspiring Sandra Cisneros Quotes
I believe love is always eternal. Even if eternity is only five minutes. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Write about what makes you different. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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? ~ Sandra Cisneros.
People know when you’re speaking from el corazón. You have that pain. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
I think people should read fairy tales, because we’re hungry for a mythology that will speak to our fears. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
How can art make a difference in the world? ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Heartbreak makes us stronger; it’s an opportunity for spiritual growth. How can you understand someone else’s pain if you have not yourself suffered? ~ Sandra Cisneros.
Revolutionary Sandra Cisneros Quotes
For me, a story’s a story if people want to hear it; it’s very much based on oral storytelling. And for me, a story is a story when people give me the privilege of listening when I’m speaking it out loud. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
One press account said I was an overnight success. I thought that was the longest night I’ve ever spent. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
You’ll change. You’ll see. Wait till you meet Mr. Right. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
I don’t take it personally. It has nothing to do with me, or with my book. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
I feel comfortable in Spanish, I chat like a parrot, but I don’t have the confidence in Spanish that I do in English. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
My feminism is humanism, with the weakest being those who I represent, and that includes many beings and life forms, including some men. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
When your writing is unselfconscious, when it comes from your heart, that’s when it’s powerful. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
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. ~ Sandra Cisneros.
So these were the 80 top Sandra Cisneros quotes on life, Mexico and writing.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Short Love quotes and Cute love quotes for her.
