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."

"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."