Sandra Cisneros

Quotes from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros:

'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.'

(of grandmother) '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 have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window.'

'... a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do.'

(Friend Cathy, French descendent, moving away) 'In the meantime they'll just have to move a little farther north from Mango Street, a little farther away every time people like us keep moving in.'

(comical, of fat lady) 'Rachel shouts, You got quite a load there too.'

'Meme has a dog with grey eyes, a sheepdog with two names, one in English and one in Spanish.'

'What matters, Marin says, is for the boys to see us and for us to see them ... And Marin just looks at them without even blinking and is not afraid.'

'All brown all around, we are safe. But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and our eyes look straight.'

'The Eskimos got thirty different names for snow, I say. I read it in a book.'

'And then she [Sister Superior] made me stand up on a box of books and point. That one? she said pointing to a row of ugly three-flats, the ones even the raggedy men are ashamed to go into. Yes, I nodded even though I knew that wasn't my house and started to cry.'

(of Esperanza's aunt) 'You must keep writing. It will keep you free, and I said yes, but at that time I didn't know what she meant.'

'And then she died, my aunt who listened to my poems. / And then we began to dream the dreams.'

(after reading to Ruthie, who cannot read, needs to visit eye doctor, used to write children's books) 'She took a long time looking at me before she opened her mouth, and then she said, You have the most beautiful teeth I have ever seen, and went inside.'

(of Lois, girlfriend of Sire) '... she smells pink like babies do.'

'Sire. How did you hold her? Was it? Like this? And when you kissed her? Like this?'

'They are the only ones who understand me. I am the only one who understands them. Four skinny trees with skinny necks and pointy elbows like mine. Four who do not belong here but are here ... 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.'

(of Mamacita, 'big mama of the man across the street') '... a flutter of hips, fuchsia roses and green perfume.'

'Home. Home. Home is a house in a photograph, a pink house, pink as hollyhocks with lots of startled light. The man paints the walls of the apartment pink, but it's not the same you know. She still sighs for her pink house, and then I think she cries. I would.'

'Cuando, cuando, cuando? she asks. / Ay, Caray! We are home. This is home. HEre I am and here I stay. Speak English. Speak English. Christ!'

'And then to break her heart forever, the baby boy who has begun to talk, starts to sing the Pepsi commercial he heart on T.V. / No speak English, she says to the child who is singing in the language that sounds like tin. No speak English, no speak English, and bubbles into tears. No, no, no as if she can't believe her ears.'

(of Rafaela, locked indoors by husband because she is 'too' beautiful, leans out the window plenty) 'Rafaela who drinks and drinks coconut and papaya juice on Tuesdays and wishes there were sweeter drinks, not bitter like an empty room, but sweet sweet like the island, like the dance hall down the street where women much older than her throw green eyes easily like dice and open homes with keys. [autonomy?] And always there is someone offering sweeter drinks, someone promising to keep them on a silver string.'

'Sally is the girl with eyes like Egypt ... Sally, who taught you to paint your eyes like Cleopatra?'

'Cheryl, who is not your friend anymore ... not since she called you that name and bit a hole in your arm ...'

'Sally, do you sometimes wish you didn't have to go home? Do you wish your feet would one day keep walking and take you far away from Mango Street, far away and maybe your feet would stop in front of a house, a nice one with flowers and big windows and steps for you to climb up two by two upstairs ... 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.'

(of Minerva, who is only a little older but with a husband and two kids) 'Next week she comes over black and blue and asks what can she do? Minerva. I don't know which way she'll go. There is nothing I can do.'

'I don't tell them I am ashamed - all of us staring out the window like the hungry. I am tired of looking at what we can't have. When we win the lottery ... Mama begins, and then I stop listening.'

'People who live on hills sleep so close to the stars they forget those of us who live too much on earth ... / One day I'll own my own house, but I won't forget who I am or where I came from. 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. / 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.'

'Nenny says she won't wait her whole life for a husband to come and get her ... She wants things all her own, to pick and choose. Nenny has pretty eyes and it's easy to talk that way if you are pretty.'

'I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain. / In the movies there is always one with red red lips who is beautiful and cruel. She is the one who drives the men crazy and laughs them all away. Her power is her own. She will not give it away. / 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.'

Esperanza's mother: 'Shame is a bad thing, you know. It keeps you down. You want to know why I quit school? Because I didn't have nice clothes. No clothes, but I had brains.'

'Until one day Sally's father catches her talking to a boy and the next day she doesn't come to school. And the next. Until the way Sally tells it, he just went crazy, he just forgot he was her father between the buckle and the belt. / You're not my daughter, you're not my daughter. And then he broke into his hands.'

'Somebody started the lie that the monkey garden had been there before anything. We liked to think the garden could hide things for a thousand years. There beneath the roots of soggy flowers were the bones of murdered pirates and dinosaurs, the eye of a unicorn turned to coal. / This is where I wanted to die and where I tried one day but not even the monkey garden would have me. It was the last day I would go there.'

'... something in me wanted to throw a stick. Something wanted to say no when I watched Sally going into the garden with Tito's buddies all grinning. It was just a kiss, that's all. A kiss for each one. So what, she said.'

'Only his dirty fingernails against my skin, only his sour smell again. The moon that watched. The tilt-a-whirl. The red clowns laughing their thick-tongue laugh ... He wouldn't let me go. He said I love you, I love you, Spanish girl.'

'She [Sally, after young marriage] looks at all the things they own: the towels and the toaster, the alarm clock and the drapes. She likes looking at the walls, at how neatly their corners meet, the linoleum roses on the floor, the ceiling smooth as a wedding cake.'

(of three sisters/aunts, las comadres) 'When you leave you must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street ... / ... for the ones who cannot leave as easily as you.'

'And the thought of the mayor coming to Mango Street makes me laugh out loud. Who's going to do it [make Mango Street 'better']? Not the mayor.'

'I like to tell stories. I tell them inside my head ... / I make a story for my life, for each step my brown shoe takes. I say, "And so she trudged up the wooden stairs, her sad brown shoes taking her to the house she never liked." / I like to tell stories. I am going to tell you a story about a girl who didn't want to belong.'

'... what I remember most is Mango Street, sad red house, the house I belong but do not belong to.'

'I put it down on paper and then the ghost does not ache so much. I write it down and Mango says goodbye sometimes. She does not hold me with both arms. She sets me free.'

'One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her to keep me here forever. One day I will go away. / Friends and neighbors will say, What happened to that Esperanza? Where did she go with all those books and paper? Why did she march so far away? / They will not know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out.'