Sandra Cisneros

Grandmothers used to collect stray buttons just in case they'd need to replace that button that had somehow wandered off from your party dress or your winter coat. You'd open a closet and there would be a stack of cookie tins and boxes and jars full of the most magical buttons, all colors and shapes and sizes, just waiting.

The process of writing is like making a garment, and I often find myself making buttons long before I know what the dress they go on will look like. This idea of writing without sequence, without worrying what it is I've got or where I'm going, gives me freedom to just write, to collect strange ideas, funny images, clips of conversations, the most haunting and passionate memories, and get them down in words just in case I'll need them later. Sometimes a poem or a story will need something, I don't know what, to hold it together, so I'll hunt through my button box for something that calls out, "Here I am!" Sometimes a button waits a long, long time before it finds its place.

Grandmothers know: Never throw anything away. It might be just what you need someday.

-Sandra Cisneros