Laura Esquivel Quotes & Sayings

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

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. — Laura Esquivel

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. — Laura Esquivel

Once again she would arrive at a foreign place. Once again be the newcomer, an outsider, the one who did not belong. She knew from experience that she would quickly have to ingratiate herself with her new masters to avoid being rejected or, in more dire cases, punished. Then there would be the phase where she would have to sharpen her senses in order to see and hear as acutely as possible so that she could assimilate quickly all the new customs and the words most frequently used by the group she was to become a part of
so that finally, she would be judged on her own merits. — Laura Esquivel

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? — Laura Esquivel

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

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

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

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. — Laura Esquivel

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

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. — Laura Esquivel

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. — Laura Esquivel

At a certain point in his life he stopped searching for himself in everything that exists and gave in to temptations. Or, as you say, he sinned and later fled. — Laura Esquivel

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

The only thing that had saved her then was knitting. In prison she had become a compulsive knitter. Knitting allowed her to unite, to connect, to integrate. With every stitch she held on to dear life. Threads hold us together. — Laura Esquivel

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 — Laura Esquivel

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

[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. — Laura Esquivel

That's why it's important to keep your distance from people who have frigid breath. Just their presence can put out the most intense fire, with results we're familiar with. If we stay a good distance away from those people, it's easier to protect ourselves from being extinguished. — Laura Esquivel

Take care to chop the onion fine. — Laura Esquivel

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

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

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

Look ma'am, those narcos that mutilate, torture, and kill others are no longer a part of us. They're no longer part of any family or community; they act against everyone. They are worth nothing. But when you bury a narco, you allow him to be a part of you again. He becomes dust, food, our brother once more. His body - dissolved in the earth - now sustains life again, instead of destroying it. — Laura Esquivel

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. — Laura Esquivel

You must take care to light the matches one at a time. If a powerful emotion should ignite them all at once, they would produce a splendor so dazzling that it would illuminate far beyond what we can normally see; and then a brilliant tunnel would appear before our eyes, revealing the path we forgot the moment we were born, and summoning us to regain the divine origins we had lost. The soul ever longs to return to the place from which it came, leaving the body lifeless. — Laura Esquivel

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. — Laura Esquivel

The trouble with crying over an onion is that once the chopping gets you started and the tears begin to well up, the next thing you know you just can't stop. — Laura Esquivel

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 — Laura Esquivel

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

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. — Laura Esquivel

One is never truly alone, even when our only company is our thoughts, because what are thoughts if not the memory of interactions with others? — Laura Esquivel

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

I can't speak for readers in general, but personally I like to read stories behind which there is some truth, something real and above all, something emotional. I don't like to read essays on literature; I don't like to read critical or rational or impersonal or cold disquisitions on subjects. — Laura Esquivel

Why did you do that, Pedro? It will look ridiculous, you agreeing to marry Rosaura. What happened to the eternal love you swore to Tita? Aren't you going to keep that vow?'
'Of course I'll keep it. 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?'
'So you intend to marry without love?'
'No, Papa. I am going to marry with a great love for Tita that will never die. — Laura Esquivel

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

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

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 — Laura Esquivel

No matter how successful a relationship may be, both sexually and emotionally, the lack of money can hamper and undermine, little by little, even the greatest passion. — Laura Esquivel

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. — Laura Esquivel

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. — Laura Esquivel

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

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

You don't have to think about love; you either feel it or you don't. — Laura Esquivel

What she liked the most about drinking was not being present, that feeling of self-evasion, of disconnection, of liberation, of escape. Alcohol offered her an excellent alternative to being herself without actually dying. — Laura Esquivel

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

I like vibrant colors. — Laura Esquivel

Whoever controls information, whoever controls meaning, acquires power — Laura Esquivel

Carefully studying the delicate form of the doll, she was thinking how easy it was to wish for things as a child. Then nothing seemed impossible. Growing up, one realizes how many things one cannot wish for, the things that are forbidden, sinful. Indecent. — Laura Esquivel

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

But there was nothing more transparent to her than the fear of not being loved, the fear of being unseen, of being ignored. — Laura Esquivel

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 — Laura Esquivel

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

She felt so lost and lonely. One last chile in walnut sauce left on the platter after a fancy dinner couldn't feel any worse than she did. How many times had she eaten one of those treats, standing by herself in the kitchen, rather than let it be thrown away. When nobody eats the last chile on the plate, it's usually because none of them wants to look like a glutton, so even though they'd really like to devour it, they don't have the nerve to take it. It was as if they were rejecting that stuffed pepper, which contains every imaginable flavor; sweet as candied citron, juicy as pomegranate, with the bit of pepper and the subtlety of walnuts, that marvelous chile in the walnut sauce. Within it lies the secret of love, but it will never be penetrated, and all because it wouldn't feel proper. — Laura Esquivel

"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. — Laura Esquivel

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. — Laura Esquivel

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. — Laura Esquivel