A Quote by Sandra Cisneros

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 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.
Ralph Angel was such a great character. The single-father image has been portrayed in so many ways so having the ability to be a part of that narrative excites me!
Salinger is such a terrific writer; he did so many great things. He is one of those writers that I still reread, simply because he makes me see the possibilities and makes me feel like writing. There are certain writers who put you in the mood to write. In the way a whiff of a cigar will bring back memories of a ballgame on a Saturday afternoon, reading Salinger makes me want to get to the typewriter.
If you ask me now, I think every single writer whose work I've read has had some influence upon me, and I continue to be influenced, subtly, by everything I read, like a sponge. But then, what writers aren't? Being a literary sponge is one of the prerequisites for this insanity.
Collaboration. ... For me, it has informed every move I've ever made. And it saved me in many ways and still does. When things get hard, you can cling to the work.
If I wasn't a model I would have liked to be a gardener. It is still a puzzle to me that I ever became a model. I am an extremely private person and I do not have the temperament for fame. I think I was rather ashamed of this trivial way of earning a living.
The thing I'm most honored about is every single person that went after me, including Jeb Bush, who's down - boom. Every single person that went after me has gone way down. And I'm very honored by that. And that's what the country needs. The country needs a leader that when the country gets hit, we're going to come out on top, not keep going down. Because we're going down. Our country is going down.
This grant gave me more than memories; it gave me a crucial experience that is formative to all writers: the ability to perceive that we become writers in exile, where what we write is the only link across distance and time…I became a Maryland writer because the community of Juneau took me in.
I don't want to be little again. But at the same time I do. I want to be me like I was then, and me as I am now, and me like I'll be in the future. I want to be me and nothing but me. I want to be crazy as the moon, wild as the wind and still as the earth. I want to be every single thing it's possible to be. I'm growing and I don't know how to grow. I'm living but I haven't started living yet.
You're...writing for other writers to an extent-the dead writers whose work you admire, as well as the living writers you like to read.
You give me a credit to which I have no claim in calling me "the writer of the Constitution of the United States." This was not, like the fabled Goddess of Wisdom, the offspring of a single brain. It ought to be regarded as the work of many heads and many hands.
It feels as though a very disproportionate number of main characters are writers, because that's what the writer knows. Fair enough. But nothing bothers me more in a movie than an actor playing a writer, and you just know he's not a writer. Writers recognize other writers. Ethan Hawke is too hot to be a writer.
Best thing that's ever happened to me. I focus so much less on me. It's made me content, it's made me happy. It's like a Christmas present every single day that I get to unwrap. It's hard work.
I don't know how I made those movies. I went out every single night, I smoked pot every single day. I drank. We did everything, but I never became a drug addict or an alcoholic. Other friends are dead, many of them. So many people in this retrospective...in Female Trouble, almost everyone is dead.
The person I am every single day is the person that's growing and getting better. The more people look up to me, the more important it is to be concise with what message I want to leave. That's where I feel like I'm a role model. Maybe not to everyone, but for a lot of minorities, I am, and I kinda love that - the role model for the underdog.
A hidden nerve is what every writer is ultimately about. It's what all writers wish to uncover when writing about themselves in this age of the personal memoir. And yet it's also the first thing every writer learns to sidestep, to disguise, as though this nerve were a deep and shameful secret that needs to be swathed in many sheaths.
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