Laura Esquivel
14 quotes
Biography
Laura Beatriz Esquivel Valdés is a Mexican novelist, screenwriter and former politician. Her first novel Como agua para chocolate became a bestseller in Mexico and the United States, and was later developed into an award-winning film.
"Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves"
"As a very young girl, I understood that the interior activities of the home are as significant as the exterior activities of society."
"Tradition is an element that enters into play with destiny, because you are born into a particular family -- Jewish or Islamic or Christian or Mexican -- and your family determines to some extent what you are expected to become. And society is always there attempting to determine the role we will play within it. And these expectations are not always in good relationship with our personal desires. 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 your mission in life, and the only way to develop the strength to break with whatever familial or cultural norms are preventing you from fulfilling your destiny."
"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. The smell of nuts and chilies and garlic got all mixed up with the smells from the chapel, my grandmother's carnations, the liniments and healing herbs."
"The only way to find peace is when you are not separated, when you are not fighting, when you part of the whole."
"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. The law of love is what one really should be learning in school, and what I want to communicate to people is that they should disobey the social rules that do not pertain to them, they should rebel against what is not personally true."
"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."
"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 your mission in life and the only way to develop the strength to break with whatever familial or cultural norms are preventing you from fulfilling your destiny."
"Tradition is an element that enters into play with destiny, because you are born into a particular family - Jewish or Islamic or Christian or Mexican - and your family determines to some extent what you are expected to become. And society is always there attempting to determine the role we will play within it."
"What I find sad is that the New Age movement is primarily a commercial undertaking. But it is answering to a human need."
"Technology and industry have distanced people from nature and magic and human values."
"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."
"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."
"There are still some natural forces that everybody understands. Technology and industry have distanced people from nature and magic and human values."