Laura Esquivel Quotes

During her childhood Tita didn't distinguish between tears of laughter and tears of sorrow. For her, laughing was a form of crying.

Whoever controls information, whoever controls meaning, acquires power

I acknowledge the four elements. Water in the North; incense to recognize the air in the East; flowers for the earth in the South; a candle for light from the West. It helps me keep perspective.

Lupita thought that people who didn't dance were selfish and lonely.

When you're told there's no way you can marry the woman you love and your only hope of being near her is to marry her sister, wouldn't you do the same?

There are some things in life that shouldn't be given so much importance, if they don't change what is essential.

For me, love is the most important force. It moves the universe.

It doesn't matter to me what you did, there are some things in life that shouldn't be given so much importance, if they don't change what is essential. What you've told me hasn't changed the way I think; I'll say again, I would be delegated to be your companion for the rest of your life-but you must think over very carefully whether I am the man for you or not.

Take care to chop the onion fine.

Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves

I like vibrant colors.

There's only a space between now and here to get yourself nowhere.

Nothing had spared her from being mocked for wetting her pants, not even the fact that she had rushed to the delegado's aid.

She was passionate about knitting because it allowed her to reach a state of peacefulness, and she loved to embroider because it let her express her creativity. Both activities were liberating. They allowed her to exist outside of time.

You can feel the North. It takes hold of you, marks you. No matter how far you move from its center of gravity, you are invariably drawn to it by an invisible current, like water droplets to the earth, like a needle to a magnet, like blood to blood, desire to desire.

In film you can use images exclusively and narrate a whole story very quickly, but you don't always so easily find the form in cinema to dig deeper into human thoughts and emotions. And in a novel you can much more easily express a character's inner thoughts and feelings.

As a very young girl, I understood that the interior activities of the home are as significant as the exterior activities of society.

Keeping secrets will always lead to unhappiness and communication is the key to love.

The sun light up a drop of dew
The drop of dew soon dries
You are the light of my eyes, my eyes
I'm brought to life by you ...

Surely the heart is not a fitting place to house hatred. But where is its place? I don't know. That is one of the universe's Unknowns. It would seem that the God's truly delight in messing things up, for in not having created a particular spot to house hatred, they have provoked eternal chaos. Hatred us forever hunting down a refuge, poking it's nose where it shouldn't, taking over sites reserved for others, invariably forcing out love.

It was very pleasant to savor its aroma, for smells have the power to evoke the past, bringing back sounds and even other smells that have no match in the present. -Tita

Gertrudis got on her horse and rode away. She wasn't riding alone
she carried her childhood beside her, in the cream fritters she had enclosed in a jar in her saddlebag

Being able to listen to unrepeatable secrets, wishes, and desires wasn't as wonderful as it seemed ... being aware of what other people felt at every moment would come to cause him a lot of headaches, and huge disappointments in love.

Those huge stars have lasted for millions of years by taking care never to absorb any of the fiery rays lovers all over the world send up at them night after night. To avoid that, the star generates so much heat inside itself that it shatters the rays into a thousand pieces.
Any look it receives is immediately repulsed, reflected back onto the earth, like a trick done with mirrors. That is the reason the stars shine so brightly at night.

The most elementary of good manners ... at a social gathering one does not bring up the subject of personalities, sad topics or unfortunate facts, religion, or politics.

A woman, silent, voiceless, a mere woman who didn't bear on her shoulders the enormous responsibility of building the conquest with her words. A woman, who, contrary to what would be expected, felt relief in reclaiming her condition of submission, for it was a much more familiar sensation to be an object at the service of men than to be a creator of destiny

To know how to produce a work of art is to know how to discard the extraneous.

"Only the pots know the boiling points of the broths," she says as Tita weeps into the wedding batter she is making to celebrate the marriage of her sister to her own true love.

I watch cooking change the cook, just as it transforms the food.

The simple truth is that the truth does not exist, it all depends on a persons point of view.

Tita knew through her own flesh how fire transforms the elements, how a lump of corn flour is changed into a tortilla, how a soul that hasn't been warmed by the fire of love is lifeless, like a useless ball of corn flour.

There are still some natural forces that everybody understands. Technology and industry have distanced people from nature and magic and human values.

As a teacher I realize that what one learns in school doesn't serve for very much at all, that the only thing one can really learn is self-understanding, and this is something that can't be taught.

To the table or to bed, you must come when you are bid.

My grandmother had a very interesting theory; she said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches

[Words] cling to the very core of our memories and lie there in silence until a new desire reawakens them and recharges them with loving energy. That is one of the qualities of love that moves me most, their capacity for transmitting love. Like water, words are a wonderful conductor of energy. And the most powerful, transforming energy is the energy of love.

Ironing was an act of annihilation in which wrinkles would die and give way to order: something she required more than anything.

Words have life, memory, when you hear them you travel to the past

I grew up in a modern home, but my grandmother lived across the street in an old house that was built when churches were illegal in Mexico. She had a chapel in the home, right between the kitchen and dining room.

Then she cried without tears, which is said to hurt even more like dry labor.

The time it took to prepare didn't matter, because there is no such thing as wasted time in the kitchen
rather that is where we go to recover lost time.

No one who loves life can ignore literature, and no one who loves literature can ignore life.

Words travel as swiftly as desire, so it is possible to send a message of love without them.