"...never have to think who likes and doesn't like you. You could close your eyes and you wouldn't have to worry what people said because you never belonged here anyway and nobody could make you sad and nobody would think you're strong because you like to dream and dream. And no one could yell at you if they saw you out in the dark leaning against a car, leaning against somebody without someone thinking you are bad, without somebody saying it is wrong, without the whole world waiting for you to make a mistake when all you wanted, all you wanted, Sally, was to love and to love and to love and to love, and no one could call that crazy."
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

"Only a house, quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem."
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

"What they don't understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you've eleven, you're also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don't. You open your eyes and everything's just like yesterday, only it's today. And you are--underneath the year that make you eleven.
Like some days you might say something stupid, and that's the part of you that's still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama's lap because you're scared, and that's the part of you that's five. And maybe one day when you're all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you're three, and that's okay. That's what I tell Mama when she's sad and needs to cry. Maybe she's feeling three.
Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree truck or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That's how being eleven years old is."
— Sandra Cisneros (Woman Hollering Creek: And Other Stories)

"One day I'll own my own house, but I won't forget who I am or where I came from. "
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

"They say I'm a macha, hell on wheels, viva-la-vulva, fire and brimstone, man-hating, devastating, boogey-woman lesbian. Not necessarily, but I love the complement."
— Sandra Cisneros

"You can't erase who you are. You can't erase what you know."
— Sandra Cisneros (La Casa En Mango Street/The House on Mango Street)

"In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing."
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

""If blood is thicker than water, then menstruation is thicker than brotherhood." "
— Sandra Cisneros

"When I am too sad and too skinny to keep keeping, when I am a tiny thing against so many bricks, then it is I look at the trees. When there is nothing left to look at on this street. Four who grew despite concrete. Four who reach and do not forget to reach. Four whose only reason is to be and be."
— Sandra Cisneros (La Casa En Mango Street/The House on Mango Street)

""I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate." Chapter 35, pg. 89"
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

""And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window." Chapter 4, pg. 11"
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

""I believe love is always eternal. Even if eternity is only five minutes.""
— Sandra Cisneros

"With you I'm useless with words. As if somehow I had to learn to speak all over again, as if the words I needed haven't been invented yet. "
— Sandra Cisneros (Woman Hollering Creek: And Other Stories)

"After everything that's breakable is broken, the silence is expensive"
— Sandra Cisneros

"You must keep writing. It will keep you free, and I said yes, but at that time I didn't know what she meant. -"Born Bad""
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

"From Caramelo, on Lala's family trips from Chicago to Mexico:

"The smell of diesel exhaust, the smell of somebody roasting coffee, the smell of hot corn tortillas along with the pat-pat of the women's hands making them, the sting of roasting chiles in your throat and in your eyes. Sometimes a smell in the morning, very cool and clean that makes you sad. And a night smell when the stars open white and soft like fresh bolillo bread.

Every year I cross the border, it's the same--my mind forgets. But my body always remembers."
— Sandra Cisneros

"I want to know how love can grow irrevocable and prove the fable true.A love exists that gives. And won't take back what's given. "
— Sandra Cisneros

""If you give me five dollars I will be your friend forever."

"
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

"And when I'm through
hurling words as big as stones,
slashing the air with my tongue,
detonating wives and
setting babies crying.

And when my lovers are finished
telling me -- You're nuts
Go screw yourself,
Stop yelling and speak English please!

After everything
that's breakable is broken,
the silence expensive,
the dial tone howling like my heart. "
— Sandra Cisneros

"Who was it that said I was getting too old to play the games? Who was it I didn't listen to? I only remember that when the others ran I wanted to run too..."
— Sandra Cisneros (La Casa En Mango Street/The House on Mango Street)

"I sleep with the cat
when no one will have me.
When I can't give it away
for love or money --

I telephone the ones
who used to love me.
Or try to lure the leery
into my pretty web.

I'm looney as a June bride.
Cold as a bruja's tit.
A pathetic bitch.
In short, an ordinary woman.
Grateful to excessiveness.

At the slightest tug of generousness,
I stick to the cyclop who takes me,
lets me pee on the carpet
and keeps me fed.

Have you seen this woman?
I am considered harmless.
Armed and dangerous.
But only to me. "
— Sandra Cisneros

"The father wants the girl to be a weather girl on television, or to marry and have babies. She doesn't want to be a TV weather girl. Nor does she want to marry and have babies. Not yet. Maybe later, but there are so many other things she must do in her lifetime first. Travel. Learn how to dance the tango. Publish a book. Live in other cities. Win a National Endowment for the Arts award. See the Northern Lights. Jump out of a cake."
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

"Everybody in our family has different hair. My papa's hair is like a broom, all up in the air. And me, my hair is lazy. It never obeys barrettes or bands. Carlos' hair is thick and straight. He doesn't need to comb it. Nenny's hair is slippery--slides out of your hand. And Kiki, who is the youngest, has hair like fur."
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

""People who live on hills sleep so close to the stars they forget those of us who live too much on earth. They don't look down at all except to be content to live on hills. They have nothing to do with last week's garbage or fear of rats. Night comes. Nothing wakes them but the wind." Chapter 34, pg. 86-87"
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

"Passing bums will ask, Can I come in? I'll offer them the attic, ask them to stay, because I know how it is to be without a house. -"Bums in the Attic""
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

"Someday I will have a best friend all my own."
— Sandra Cisneros (La Casa En Mango Street/The House on Mango Street)

"Tres vicios tengo y los tengo muy arraigados: de ser borracho, jugador, y enamorado..."
— Sandra Cisneros (Woman Hollering Creek: And Other Stories)

"Anger is contagious."
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

"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."
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

"It is no disgrace to be poor - just inconvienent"
— Sandra Cisneros (Caramelo)

"''You should've seen the terrible things that happened to me as a girl, but did i cry? Not even if god commanded it''"
— Sandra Cisneros (Caramelo)

"The devil knows more from experience than from being the devil"
— Sandra Cisneros (Caramelo)

"Some days after dinner, guests and I will sit in front of a fire. Floorboards will squeak upstairs. The attic grumble.
Rats? they'll ask?
Bums, I'll say, and I'll be happy."
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

"Their strength is secret. They send ferocious roots beneath the ground. They grow up and they grow down and grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is how they keep."
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
— Dr. Seuss

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
— Maya Angelou

"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."
— Dr. Seuss

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
— Marilyn Monroe

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
— Mark Twain

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
— Abraham Lincoln

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
— Oscar Wilde

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."
— Elie Wiesel

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
— C.S. Lewis

"Women are like teabags; you never know how strong they are until they're put in hot water."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
— Martin Luther King Jr.

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
— John Lennon

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by frost."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)