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 travel as swiftly as desire, so it is possible to send a message of love without them.

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!

"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.

[...] each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves

When you're told there's no way you can marry the woman you love and your only hope of being near her is to marry her sister, wouldn't you do the same?

It was very pleasant to savor its aroma, for smells have the power to evoke the past, bringing back sounds and even other smells that have no match in the present. -Tita