Best 41 quotes of Laura Esquivel on MyQuotes

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.

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.

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

I like vibrant colors.

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

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

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.

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

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.

"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.

Take care to chop the onion fine.

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.

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

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

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

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!

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.

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

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?

[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.

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

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.

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.

...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.

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.

Como vulgarmente se dice, se le ponía la piel de gallina cada vez que se rompía un huevo.

En la familia De la Garza se podían perdonar algunas cosas, pero nunca la desobediencia ni el cuestionamiento de las actitudes de los padres.

Escapaba a su comprensión el que un ser, independiente del parentesco que pudiera tener con otro, así no más, con la mano en la cintura rechazara de una manera tan brutal una atención.

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

Mi abuela tenía una teoría muy interesante, decía que si bien todos nacemos con una caja de cerillos en nuestro interior, no los podemos encender solos, necesitamos, como en el experimento, oxígeno y la ayuda de una vela. Sólo que en este caso el oxígeno tiene que provenir, por ejemplo, del aliento de la persona amada; la vela puede ser cualquier tipo de alimento, música, caricia, palabra o sonido que haga disparar el detonador y así encender uno de los cerillos. Por un momento nos sentiremos deslumbrados por una intensa emoción. Se producirá en nuestro interior un agradable calor que irá desapareciendo poco a poco conforme pase el tiempo, hasta que venga una nueva explosión a reavivarlo. Cada persona tiene que descubrir cuáles son sus detonadores para poder vivir, pues la combustión que se produce al encenderse uno de ellos es lo que nutre de energía el alma. En otras palabras, esta combustión es su alimento. Si uno no descubre a tiempo cuáles son sus propios detonadores, la caja de cerillos se humedece y ya nunca podremos encender un solo fósforo. Claro que también hay que poner mucho cuidado en ir encendiendo los cerillos uno a uno. Porque si por una emoción muy fuerte se llegan a encender todos de un solo golpe producen un resplandor tan fuerte que ilumina más allá de lo que podemos ver normalmente y entonces ante nuestros ojos aparece un túnel esplendoroso que nos muestra el camino que olvidamos al momento de nacer y que nos llama a reencontrar nuestro perdido origen divino. El alma desea reintegrarse al lugar de donde proviene, dejando al cuerpo inerte...

Mi abuela tenia una teoría muy interesante, decía que si bien todos nacemos con una caja de cerillos en nuestro interior, no los podemos encender solos, necesitamos, como en el experimento, oxígeno y la ayuda de una vela. Sólo que en este caso el oxígeno tiene que provenir, por ejemplo, del aliento de la persona amada; la vela puede ser cualquier tipo de alimento, música, caricia, palabra o sonido que haga disparar el detonador y así encender uno de los cerillos. Por un momento nos sentiremos deslumbrados por una intensa emoción. Se producirá en nuestro interior un agradable calor que irá desapareciendo poco a poco conforme pase el tiempo, hasta que venga una nueva explosión a reavivarlo. Cada persona tiene que descubrir cuáles son sus detonadores para poder vivir, pues la combustión que se produce al encenderse uno de ellos es lo que nutre de energía el alma. En tras palabras, esta combustión es su alimento. Si uno no descubre a tiempo cuáles son sus propios detonadores, la caja de cerillos se humedece y ya nunca podremos encender un solo fósforo. Claro que también hay que poner mucho cuidado en ir encendiendo los cerillos uno a uno. Porque si por una emoción muy fuerte se llegan a encender todos de un solo golpe producen un resplandor tan fuerte que ilumina más allá de lo que podemos ver normalmente y entonces ante nuestros ojos aparece un túnel esplendoroso que nos muestra el camino que olvidamos al momento de nacer y que nos llama a reencontrar nuestro perdido origen divino. El alma desea reintegrarse al lugar de donde proviene, dejando al cuerpo inerte...

¡Ojalá que a Rosaura la boca se le hiciera chicharrón! Y que nunca hubiera dejado escapar esas repugnantes, malolientes, incoherentes, pestilentes, indecentes y repelentes palabras. Más valía que se las hubiera tragado y guardado en el fondo de sus entrañas hasta que se le pudrieran y agusanaran. Y ojalá que ella viviera lo suficiente como para impedir que su hermana llevara a cabo tan nefastas intenciones.

Qué orgullosa se sentía de ver a Esperanza tan segura de sí misma, tan inteligente, tan preparada, tan feliz, tan capaz, pero al mismo tiempo, tan femenina y tan mujer en el más amplio sentido de la palabra.

¡Se sentía tan sola y abandonada! Un chile en nogada olvidado en una charola después de un gran banquete no se sentiría peor que ella.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The simple truth is that the truth does not exist; it all depends on a person's point of view.

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.

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