People From Chicago

"Of course I like to write about love, but then I’ll ask, how is Mexican love different from American love? I’ll look at the Mexican models of love, and that leads me to the true Mexican love. True love in Mexico isn’t between lovers; it’s between a parent and a child. Mexico is a very intense culture of sons adoring their mothers, and this is why I claim that Mexican culture is matriarchal. Because the one constant, faithful, inviolable, holy love of loves—the love of your life—is not your wife or your lover; it’s your mother."

"my favorite writers are, right now Merce Rodoreda, Grace Paley, Juan Rulfo, Manuel Puig, Marguerite Duras - these are my favorite writers. I'm trying to reach that world level. I think that we should always aim for that level."

"I don’t take it personally. It has nothing to do with me, or with my book. The book is being taught because it is telling a story that has spiritual resonance at this time in history. It is serving a need, it is doing its healing, it is transmitting light, but I was just the conduit for that light, not the source. I am grateful that the timing was right for my labor to be recognized, and that the readers were ready to hear this story at this time. I am fortunate and blessed to be the flute, but I recognize and acknowledge I am not the music."

"I like living in a town not dominated by cars. I like living in a small community where artists from around the world come and go. I like living in a town with big sky and big clouds, and where you can connect with things of the spirit easily. It’s both stimulating and peaceful all at once. It makes me want to write."

"Language is much better than throwing stones; language is much, much stronger."

"Sandra Cisneros…has done so much to help other writers…There had been some earlier Chicano works, like Pocho, a novel that came out in 1959. But none of these earlier works really made an impact that showed that there was a great demand for Chicano literature. I think Sandra Cisneros made inroads there…Sandra wasn't the earliest Chicana writer either. But she was the one who stimulated the interest in Chicano and Chicana writing."

"I think my work still has a distinctive voice that is uniquely mine—and that voice is one of a person speaking Spanish in English. By that I mean that I write with the syntax and sensibility of Spanish, even when there isn’t a syllable of Spanish present. It’s engrained in the way I look at the world, and the way I construct sentences and stories. I was not aware of this when I wrote House, but I’m conscious of it now. What remains the same? Well, I am still as astonished by the world and as intuitive/foolish as ever, but I am aware that this is a good thing, and not ashamed of it as I was when I was young. The difference now is that I know myself. I think my writing is wiser, and, I hope, more complex."

"It’s memorable because it makes you either laugh or cry. If a story’s really good, it does both. Sometimes it’s not the story’s fault if it doesn’t stay with you, because you’re too old or too young for it. I feel that, in the Native American sense, the story cycles; there are different times of your life that a story may come to you. You don’t remember it, and then you hear. it again or read it again later in your life, and because of what’s happened in your life it’s distinct from the first time you heard it."

"If I had to speak about anything that was difficult in my life now looking back at it, I would say the most difficult part was how the world made you feel about being poor, about being a girl. And, later, how painful it was navigating the world as a young woman. A lot of times I found myself in disastrous situations because I was such an innocent/idiot. It left me damaged as a human being for decades. I think having been beautiful was a cross, and I’m grateful I’m no longer young and no longer beautiful in that same way."

"Working-class women's literature, women of color, specifically Latina women's writing like my friend Ana Castillo's, or my friend Cherrie Moraga's, Helena Viramontes's, Elena Poniatowska's, and Marguerite Duval's sends me all the way to my typewriter as much as Manuel Puig's stories."

"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."

"A further measure of the importance of the feminism of women of color was the tremendous efflorescence in their fiction. The writings of Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros, Amy Tan, and Louise Erdrich, among others, played a major role in bringing the feminist message and perspective to the masses of American women."

"I think we are all gifted as children, but we aren’t gifted with the same gifts. In crowded, poor schools, an overwhelmed teacher can’t always help us discover what our gifts are. I am grateful my mom was a frustrated artist. At home we drew murals, created puppet shows, had craft hours, went to the library, visited museums. I’m certain without my mom, I wouldn’t have been an artist today."

"At all times, Sandra Cisneros has penned poetry of utterly divine language and imagery."

"Sandra Cisneros has a gift and an attitude we should all be grateful for."

"Books are medicine. What heals me may not be the right prescription for anyone else."

"the poem "Poet's Progress" is to Sandra, reflecting on our lives...There is a great satisfaction that comes from being in the life that one has chosen. When I say, "Save me from a stupid life," I mean an unquestioned life, those unexamined choices that Sandra and I were both expected to make. We both chose poetry, which, to me, is the exact opposite of the stupid life."

"We’re impressed by the ability of Eastern religions like Hinduism to meet science head-on, agreeing in many respects about important topics, such as the age and size of the universe. Today, Hindu culture is one of the last remaining enclaves of a universal-minded religion."

"His consistency... his ability to get the ball into the hands of the right people... he played great defense and when you needed him to score he would. He was a very consistent player. He was always there."

"He's really one of the steadiest players I've ever seen. He was there to play every night. Some guys today play hard one night and go through the motions the next. But Maurice played hard every night."

"This is truly an appalling appointment. An ideologue, charlatan, and hack. Frankly so bad the putatively serious economists in Trump administration should resign as matter of honor."

"Look at his writings! I’m not enthused. I’m a woman."

"The Fed is a disaster. We should have a discussion in this country about whether we need a Fed."

"I’m a radical on this; I’d get rid of a lot of these child labour laws. I want people starting to work at 11, 12."

"I’m kind of new to this game, frankly, so I’m going to be on a steep learning curve myself about how the Fed operates, how the Federal Reserve makes its decisions. It’s hard for me to say even what my role will be there, assuming I get confirmed."

"We have got to get rid of the Federal Reserve and move toward a gold standard in this country."

"We have courts overturning the will of the people in state after state on issues like gay marriage and if you are — God forbid — for traditional marriage and refuse to bake the cake, you are chastised as a bigot."

"This is the first genuinely bad Trump pick for the Fed. He hasn’t gotten a thing right in twenty years, (check the record), and the Senate should not confirm him. Here’s my challenge to any informed voter of any partisan leaning: call your favorite economist. Whether they’re left, right, libertarian or socialist, none of them will endorse Stephen Moore for the Fed. He’s manifestly unqualified....By the way, and I’m totally serious about this—I think Ivanka would be a better pick for the Fed than Stephen Moore."

"Steve is a perfectly amiable guy, but he does not have the intellectual gravitas for this important job.... It is time for Senators to do their job. Mr. Moore should not be confirmed."

"I am not an expert on monetary policy."

"Colleges are places for rabble-rousing. For men to lose their boyhood innocence. To do stupid things. To stay out way too late drinking. To chase skirts. (At the University of Illinois, we used to say that the best thing about Sunday nights was sleeping alone.) It’s all a time-tested rite of passage into adulthood. And the women seemed to survive just fine. If they were so oppressed and offended by drunken, lustful frat boys, why is it that on Friday nights they showed up in droves in tight skirts to the keg parties?"

"No Women. How outrageous is this? This year they allowed a woman ref a men’s NCAA game. Liberals celebrate this breakthrough as a triumph for gender equity. The NCAA has been touting this as example of how progressive they are. I see it as an obscenity. Is there no area in life where men can take vacation from women? What’s next? Women invited to bachelor parties? Women in combat? (Oh yeah, they’ve done that already.) Why can’t women ref he women’s games and men the men’s games. I can't wait to see the first lady ref have a run in with Bobby Knight.... Here’s the rule change I propose: No more women refs, no women announcers, no women beer venders, no women anything. There is, of course, an exception to this rule. Women are permitted to participate, if and only if, they look like Bonnie Bernstein. The fact that Bonnie knows nothing about basketball is entirely irrelevant. Bonnie Bernstein should wear a halter top. This is a no-brainer, CBS. What in the world are you waiting for?"

"The women tennis pros don’t really want equal pay for equal work. They want equal pay for inferior work. There's a very practical reason why Pete Sampras, for example, makes a lot more money than Martina Hingis does. He's much, much better than she is. The day that Martina can return Pete's serve is the day she should get paid what he does. If there is an injustice in tennis, it’s that women like Martina Hingis and Monica Seles make millions of dollars a year, even though there are hundreds of men at the collegiate level (assuming their schools haven’t dropped the sport) who could beat them handily."

"I don't play this work as a tour de force, as a dazzling display of technique--I play it as a life experience."

"What makes peewee soccer particularly insidious is that boys and girls play together. The left has converted this sport into a giant social experiment imposed upon us by the geniuses that have put women in combat in the military. No one seems to care much that co-ed sports is doing irreparable harm to the psyche of America’s little boys. At this pre-puberty state of life girls tower over the boys and typically have greater coordination. Last year the Pele of my son’s league was a kindergartner named Kate Lynn—Secretariat in pig tails. During one game, Kate Lynn stampeded over Justin repeatedly, which, of course, did wonders for his fledgling self-esteem. After the third knockdown, I quietly pulled him aside and advised: “Remember that rule about never hitting a girl. Let’s suspend that for the next 40 minutes.” But he never did because she was bigger than he was. If the girls are bad, the moms are worse. They berate the referees. Taunt opposing players. Nag the coach unmercifully to put their no-talent kid back in."

"Capitalism is a lot more important than democracy. I'm not even a big believer in democracy. I always say that democracy can be two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner."

"The crisis in America today isn’t about women’s wages; it’s about men’s wages. Men are still the chief breadwinners in most families, and their wages are not moving much at all. If we look at Census Bureau data, we find that while men’s wages have risen by about 6 percent in real terms since 1980, women’s wages have risen by about 60 percent. Any gap in pay — real or imagined — is rapidly shrinking. Furthermore, the latest surveys of college graduates find virtually no pay discrepancy between men and women, so for this generation the 77-cents mantra is as outdated as bell-bottom jeans. What are the implications of a society in which women earn more than men? We don’t really know, but it could be disruptive to family stability. If men aren’t the breadwinners, will women regard them as economically expendable? We saw what happened to family structure in low-income and black households when a welfare check took the place of a father’s paycheck. Divorce rates go up when men lose their jobs."

"Stephen Moore is a particularly poor choice for the Federal Reserve Board. He appears more devoted to pursuing a far-right economic agenda than willing to understand the complexity of economic policy."

"You have a 16-count indictment … and then within a very short period of time, the case gets dismissed by the prosecution and it gets sealed. Unusual is almost not strong enough of a word"

"It's Mr. Smollett who committed this hoax, period. If he wanted to clear his name, the way to do that was in a court of law so that everyone could see the evidence"

"We now know that DNA differences are the major systematic source of psychological differences between us. Environmental effects are important but what we have learned in recent years is that they are mostly random – unsystematic and unstable – which means that we cannot do much about them."

"Understanding how DNA makes us who we are will teach us to be more tolerant of each other."

"DNA isn’t all that matters but it matters more than everything else put together."

"Where I come from, if you wear a wire someone’s going to kick your ass."

"It's a measure of treasure that gives me the pleasure Of loving you the way I do And you know I would gladly say I need your love badly And bring these little things to you. Cause you got gold Gold inside of you You got gold Gold inside of you Well I got some Gold inside me too"

"I wish you love - and happiness I guess I wish - you all the best I wish you don't - do like I do And never fall in love with someone like you Cause if you fell - just like I did You'd probably walk around the block like a little kid But kids don't know - they can only guess..."

"I can see the fire burning Burning right behind your eyes I can see the fire burning, baby Burning right behind your eyes You must've swallowed a candle Or some other kind of surprise."

"Why just before last Christmas My baby went away And I find it real surprising For myself to hear me say That everything is cool Everything's okay"

"Oh my God, what have I gotten myself into? I'm a human corkscrew and all my wine is blood They're gonna kill me Mama. They don't like me Bud. So Jesus went to Heaven and he went there awful quick All them people killed him and he wasn't even sick So come and gather around me my contemporary peers And I'll tell you all the story of Jesus, the missing years"

"Kiss a little baby Give the world a smile If you take an inch Give 'em back a mile Cause if you lie like a rug And you don't give a damn You're never gonna be As happy as a clam So I'm sitting in a hotel Trying to write a song My head is just as empty As the day is long."