Quotes from Laura Esquivel

It occurred to her that she could use her mother's strength right now. Mama Elena was merciless, killing with a single blow. But then again not always. For Tita she had made an exception; she had been killing her a little at a time since she was a child, and she still hadn't quite finished her off.

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.

Señor, no es por vicio ni por fornicio sino por dar un hijo a tu servicio.

Observando detenidamente las delicadas formas del muñeco, pensaba lo fácil que era desear cosas durante la niñez. Entonces no hay imposibles. Cuando uno crece se da cuenta de todo lo que no se puede desear porque es algo prohibido, pecaminoso. Indecente.

Y entendió que, antes de que encarnara dentro de su vientre, ella y su hijo ya eran lo mismo, y lo seguían siendo. Nunca había habido pérdida ni separación. Nunca había habido cuerpos diferenciados entre madre e hijo.

A total of six thousand Cholultecans perished. Cortés ordered the few priests who survived to wash the floors and walls, to rid the temples of idols and in their place to install crosses and images of the Virgin Mary.

For Cortés, the conquest was a struggle of good against evil, of the true god against false gods, of superior beings against inferior beings.

The thousands of dismembered corpses, lifeless, purposeless, weighed heavily on Malinalli's spirit. Her soul was no longer her own; it had been captured during the struggle by all those silent, defenseless, unspared bodies.

En el primer acto van a plantear cuál es su problema, en el segundo acto lo van a confrontar y en el tercer acto le encontrarán una solución.

Tita supo en carne propia por qué el contacto con el fuego altera los elementos, por qué un pedazo de masa se convierte en tortilla, por qué un pecho sin haber pasado por el fuego del amor es un pecho inerte, una bola de masa sin ninguna utilidad.

pero eso no significa que no se le pueda rescatar, sí se puede, pero antes es necesario que uno reconozca cuáles son los hilos invisibles que nos mantienen unidos a los demás. Cuáles son nuestros puntos de unión. Nuestros puntos de contacto. Por lo mismo, Lupita no entendía por

Bir tek gerçek vard?r, o da gerçek diye bir ÅŸey olmad???d?r! Gerçek, herkesin bakt??? noktaya göre deÄŸiÅŸir.

I wonder how much time had passed between the moment God said Let there be light and the appearance of light? Sometimes, the mere difference of a single second between one event and another can be enough to turn our lives around one hundred and eighty degrees.

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.

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.

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

Progress makes us lose the feeling of a ceremony that cooking should have. It has significantly shifted our values so that now it seems to us that only activities with an economic reward are worth pursuing.

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 culinary tradition in my family is very strong. My mother, a very wise woman, spent the better part of her life in a kitchen. It's a very strong part of her identity. I grew up there next to the fire.

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.

What others call magic realism is normal and an everyday thing to me.

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 moon, light and darkness, the eagle and the serpent, all for the same reason. They are perfect complements and the mechanism we use to reach heaven.

Everyone's past is locked up in their recipes - the past of an individual and the past of a nation as well.

To what extent has each one of us contributed to the rise in violence and hatred?