Laura Esquivel Quotes

I think my attitudes about the past are very traditional. You can't ignore history; you can't escape it even if you want to. You might as well know where you come from, and you might as well know that everything has been done in some shape or form.

Tradition does not mean that the living are dead, it means that the dead are living.

In my view, you can't go to the future if you haven't come from the past.

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.

You can't build a future if you don't have a past.

Read about history, and you become aware that nothing starts with us.

My heritage has been my grounding, and it has brought me peace.

Language also encodes our past. We want to know who we are. To know who we are, we have to know who we used to be. Consequently, our literature, written in the past, anchors us in that past.

I say it is indispensable to look ahead of and behind oneself in the present. If there is such a thing as tradition, and I believe there is, it can only exist in the sense of the most profound movements of culture.

We are all part of a tradition, at least we depend on the past.

Tradition is the illusion of permanance.

Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.

You never realise how much of your background is sewn into the lining of your clothes.

People will not look forward to posterity who are not anxious to look backward to their ancestry

A deep meaning resides in old customs.

… history does not belong to us but rather we to it

I like places that have history in the sense of - you feel responsible to it.

I think that our comfort is in our history.

I just love tradition.

One should live with history round one.

We should not ignore or isolate our roots, no matter where we stay.

History is very much bound up in family experience.

A people's relationship to their heritage is the same as the relationship of a child to its mother.

We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from.

You can't run from your roots.