Cuba Quotes

“Fiction has been maligned for centuries as being "false," "untrue," yet good fiction provides more truth about the world, about life, and even about the reader, than can be found in non-fiction.”
― Clark Zlotchew

“In this populist regime, everything belongs to the people. If everyone owned everything , then, of course, no one owned anything. So how could it be theft if no one owned it?”
― Rafael Polo, Growing Up American

“When they reached their ship, Ed gazed out at the bay. It was black. The sky was black, but the bay was even blacker. It was a slick, oily blackness that glowed and reflected the moonlight like a black jewel. Ed saw the tiny specks of light around the edges of the bay where he knew ships must be docked, and at different points within the bay where vessels would be anchored. The lights were pale and sickly yellow when compared with the bright blue-white sparkle of the stars overhead, but the stars glinted hard as diamonds, cold as ice. Pg. 26.”
― Clark Zlotchew, Once upon a Decade: Tales of the Fifties

“Cuando vayamos al mar
yo te diré mi secreto:
Me envuelve, pero no es ola...
Me amarga..., pero no es sal...”
― Dulce Maria Loynaz

“Anarchy is like custard cooking over a flame; it has to be constantly stirred or it sticks and gets heavy, like government.”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“That's because true travel, the kind with no predetermined end, is one of the most selfish endeavors we can possibly undertake-an act in which we focus solely on our own fulfillment, with little regard to those we leave behind. After all, we're the ones venturing out into the big crazy world, filling up journals, growing like weeds. And we have the gall to think they're just sitting at home, soaking in security and stability.
It is only when we reopen these wrapped and ribboned boxes, upon our triumphant return home, that we discover nothing is the way we had left it before.”
― Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana

“I'm thirty-six years old and I've been married once and he left and I don't want to feel this way anymore. Like I can't be vulnerable. Can't relax. It's exhausting, always being on the defensive, keeping my guard up. I feel like Cuba.”
― Noah Hawley, Other People's Weddings

“Eché mi esperanza al mar:
y aún fue en el mar, mi esperanza
verde-mar...”
― Dulce María Loynaz, A Woman in Her Garden: Selected Poems

“A fallow mind is a field of discontent.”
― John H. Cunningham, Red Right Return

“Offspring were a joy or a shame, but still the crown of their elders, nature's unpredictable creatures.”
― Achy Obejas, Ruins

“Currents of cigarette fumes wafted through what passed for air. Attractive young women in bright-hued gowns glided through the streams of smoke, like tropical fish in an aquarium. Detecting the white uniforms and leathery faces, they promptly approached the Navy men. Very pretty, Ed thought, but hungry, a school of piranha. Just what the doctor ordered: fun and games with no complications. Right: no complications.”
― Clark Zlotchew, Once upon a Decade: Tales of the Fifties

“The only way to Cuba is with the CIA.”
― Phil Ochs

“No fim da entrevista, quando o líder cubano [Fidel Castro] já havia discorrido sobre tema variados, a repórter Lucia Newman quis saber a opinião sobre os cubanos presos em Miami 'acusados de fazer espionagem para o seu governo'. Ele começou dizendo que achava 'assombroso' que os Estados Unidos, 'o país que mais espiona no mundo', acusassem de espionagem justamente a Cuba, 'o país mais espionado do mundo'.”
― Fernando Morais, Os Últimos Soldados da Guerra Fria

“For an instant, I’m transported to Lala’s kitchen and the herbal smell of her sofrito simmering as part of some guisado. A symphony of garlic, onions, and peppers play among the pots and pans, and I find myself longing for her arms tying an apron around my waist.”
― Mayra Cuevas, Salty, Bitter, Sweet

“Communism — ladies and gentlemen, I say it without flinching: communism in eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba brought land reform and human services; a dramatic bettering of the living conditions of hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or never since witnessed in human history, and that's something to appreciate. Communism transformed desperately poor countries into societies in which everyone had adequate food, shelter, medical care, and education, and some of us who come from poor families who carry around the hidden injuries of class are very impressed; are very, very impressed by these achievements and are not willing to dismiss them as economistic. To say that socialism doesn't work is to overlook the fact that it did work and it worked for hundreds of millions of people. 'But what about the democratic rights that they lost?' We hear U.S. leaders talking about 'restoring' democracy to the communist countries, but these countries—with the exception of Czechoslovakia—were not democracies before communism. Russia was a Czarist autocracy; Poland was a right-wing fascist dictatorship under Piłsudski, with concentration camps of its own; Albania was an Italian fascist protectorate as early as 1927; Cuba was a U.S.-sponsored dictatorship under that butcher Batista; Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria were outright fascist regimes openly allied with Nazi Germany in World War 2. So, what—exactly what democracy are we talking about restoring? The socialist countries did not take away any rights that didn't exist there in the first place.”
― Michael Parenti

“You think your life is unfurling in a certain way, and you let yourself grow happy about it, a smile rising at the slightest thing. A boy in short pants eating a pastelito makes you grin like a lunatic at the vision of your own hoped‐for children, their dark shiny heads rising, year by year, from the Cuban earth, your wife towering behind them, kind and wise. Then you find yourself in a midnight cemetery guarding your mustache from the covetous ghost of an American woman you once loved. Who wouldn’t laugh?”
― Pascha Sotolongo, The Only Sound Is the Wind: Stories

“Your Honor, I always wear pants. And on the night in question, instead of wearing them underneath, I wore them just like men do, based on my perfect civil right to do so, on the OUTSIDE

(After getting arrested for wearing pants)”
― Luisa Capetillo

“Seeing the society that the Cuban people were attempting to build inspired me to believe it was possible to arrange a nation’s priorities to meet the needs of the majority of its people instead of just those of its corporations and super rich.”
― Iris Morales, Through the Eyes of Rebel Women: The Young Lords, 1969-1976

“Porque tengamos cerca de la muerte, un consuelo,
Puerto Rico, mi patria, te reclama en su suelo,
y por mi voz herida, se conduce hasta tí!

Because near to death we will have one consolation,
Puerto Rico, my homeland, clamors for you on its soil,
and through my wounded voice, conveys itself to you!

(A José Marti / To José Marti)”
― Julia de Burgos

“Very often people abroad see us talking about our free education as some sort of empty political slogan but in fact it is a reality and a priority.

(Interview in A Contemporary Cuba Reader, 2000)”
― Nancy Morejón

“In exchange for hard work the [Cuban] people have freedom. Not only freedom from want but freedom to develop themselves as individuals. They have shelter, no mortgages, sufficient food for survival and sufficient clothing. There are few cars, as this is really a luxury item, and what cars there are, are for the use of the people. There are many buses. These buses are all made in France or England. In Havana, transportation is only 5 cents. If you have it, you pay it consciously, if not you can ride anyway. I used to watch the people get on and everyone seemed to pay. Public telephones are free. Medical care is completely free to everyone. Even sports events are free.

(1969)”
― Enriqueta Vasquez, Enriqueta Vasquez and the Chicano Movement: Writings from El Grito del Norte (Hispanic Civil Rights (Paperback))

“I had heard that the revolution lives everyday and that it must continue to change and live everyday if it is to be truly of and for the people.

(1969, about Cuba)”
― Enriqueta Vasquez, Enriqueta Vasquez and the Chicano Movement: Writings from El Grito del Norte (Hispanic Civil Rights (Paperback))

“We want an abundant society with a different kind of man," the Cubans said. In other words, people will not work for money-they will not have to sell their hard work to somebody else. They will work for the good of the land, for the good of all the people.

(1969)”
― Enriqueta Vasquez, Enriqueta Vasquez and the Chicano Movement: Writings from El Grito del Norte (Hispanic Civil Rights (Paperback))

“[In Cuba] there are not a few people with too much and others with too little; instead, everyone has enough.

(1969)”
― Enriqueta Vasquez, Enriqueta Vasquez and the Chicano Movement: Writings from El Grito del Norte (Hispanic Civil Rights (Paperback))

“que voy de nuevo entre las calles, entre orichas,
entre el calor oscuro y corpulento,
entre los colegiales que declaman Martí,
entre los automóviles, entre los nichos, entre mamparas,
entre la Plaza del pueblo, entre los negros, entre guardacantones,
entre los parques, entre la ciudad vieja, entre el viejo viejo Cerro,
entre mi Catedral, entre mi puerto

aquí vuelvo a decír: amor, ciudad atribuída

(de "Amor, Ciudad Atribuída")”
― Nancy Morejón, Where the Island Sleeps Like a Wing: Selected Poetry

“Cuba and Belgium are both countries of modest size, surrounded by large, powerful and often hostile powers.”
― José Martí

“Marx's projected emancipating socialist "Kingdom of Freedom" - freedom not only from coercion but from any sort of necessity- turned out to be totalitarian and among the most violently oppressive regimes ever.”
― Azar Gat, Ideological Fixation: From the Stone Age to Today's Culture Wars

“Пропаганда называет диссидентов «контрреволюционерами», поскольку революция на Кубе типа продолжается («нет у революции конца», помним-помним). Стало быть, люди, желающие перемен, это здесь контрреволюционеры.
А те, которые хотят оставаться у власти, в роскоши реквизированных особняков через шестьдесят лет после ее захвата — это революционеры!
Тут главное — не перепутать.”
― Виктор Шендерович

“I started learning English from Abuelo Jorge's old grammar textbooks. I found them in Abuelo Celia's closet. They date back to 1919, the first year he started working for the American Electric Broom Company. At school, only a few students were allowed to learn English, by special permission. The rest of us had to learn Russian. I liked the curves of the Cyrillic letters, their unexpected sounds. I liked the way my name looked: Иван. I took Russian for nearly two years at school. My teacher, Sergey Mikoyan, praised me highly. He said I had an ear for languages, that if I studied hard I could be a translator for world leaders. It was true I could repeat anything he said, even tongue twisters like kolokololiteyshchiki perekolotili vikarabkavshihsya vihuholey "the church bell casters slaughtered the desmans that had scrambled out." He told me I had a gift, like playing the violin, or mastering chess.”
― Cristina García, Dreaming in Cuban

“Los incontables habitantes de la ciudad que no habían alcanzado turno en la cola de los sueños”
― Leonardo Padura