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.

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

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.

[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.

"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.

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!

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