Laura Esquivel

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

“La necesidad es la madre de todos los inventos y todas las posturas.”

“I wanted to share my doubts and my culinary, amorous, and cosmic experiences. So I wrote 'Like Water for Chocolate,' which is merely the reflection of who I am as a woman, a wife, a mother,...”

“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 ki...”

“The same way one tells a recipe, one tells a family history. Each one of us has our past locked inside.”

“You'll have to forgive me this boldness, but I think women are very fortunate that men exist! The gods are very wise and certainly knew what they were doing. They created the sun and the moo...”

“Technology and industry have distanced people from nature and magic and human values.”

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

“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 o...”

“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 perspect...”

“I am always interested in that relationship between outer reality and inner desire, and I think it is important to pay attention to the inner voice because it is the only way to discover you...”

“I started knitting in the Congress, and it was a scandal - like, big scandal.”

“Cooking is one of the strongest ceremonies for life. When recipes are put together, the kitchen is a chemical laboratory involving air, fire, water and the earth. This is what gives value to...”

“If you take a frozen box and stick it in the microwave, you become connected to the factory. We've forgotten who we are.”

“Destiny has always been something that interested me as a subject, but not in a fatalistic way because I believe that one can transform destiny through self-knowledge.”

“It wasn't books that inspired me to write. For me, inspiration was simple, immediate: I got it from eating, dancing, talking. I got it from life lived, things touched, from sensuality, from...”

“We know that the hardest work is to keep yourself open to the world that technology hasn't tamed.”

“We must adjust our value systems and work to modify today's societies, in which economic interests are carried to the extreme and irrationally produce not merely objects, but weapons of war....”

“When I cook certain dishes, I smell my grandmother's kitchen, my grandmother's smells. I thought, 'What a wonderful way to tell a story.'”

“We're in a period of revolutionary change. I'm optimistic. One's self changes, and then the world changes. It's going to begin internally, not externally.”