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

“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

“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

“[W]e understood perfectly that the life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth. . . . [The revolution] demands they understand that pride in serving our fellow man is much more important than a good income; that the people's gratitude is much more permanent, much more lasting than all the gold one can accumulate.”
― Che Guevara

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

“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

“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

“When he returned to Florida in the early part of 1939, Hemingway took his boat the Pilar across the Straits of Florida to Havana, where he checked into the Hotel Ambos Mundos. Shortly thereafter, Martha joined him in Cuba and they first rented, and later in 1940, purchased their home for $12,500. Located 10 miles to the east of Havana, in the small town of San Francisco de Paula, they settled into what they called Finca Vigía, the Lookout Farm. On November 20, 1940, after a difficult divorce from Pauline, Ernest and Martha got married. Even though Cuba had become their home, they still took editorial assignments overseas, including one in China that Martha had for Collier’s magazine. Returning to Cuba just prior to the outbreak of World War II, he convinced the Cuban government to outfit his boat with armaments, with which he intended to ambush German submarines. As the war progressed, Hemingway went to London as a war correspondent, where he met Mary Welsh. His infatuation prompted him to propose to her, which of course did not sit well with Martha.
Hemingway was present at the liberation of Paris and attended a party hosted by Sylvia Beach. He, incidentally, also renewed a friendship with Gertrude Stein. Becoming a famous war correspondence he covered the Battle of the Bulge, however he then spent the rest of the war on the sidelines hospitalized with pneumonia. Even so, Ernest was awarded the Bronze Star for bravery. Once again, Hemingway fell in lust, this time with a 19-year-old girl, Adriana Ivancich. This so-called platonic, wink, wink, love affair was the essence of his novel Across the River and Into the Trees, which he wrote in Cuba.”
― Captain Hank Bracker, "The Exciting Story of Cuba"

“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

“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

“Los mal alimentados serán siempre gobernados, desde arriba, por los bien alimentados.”
― Aldous Huxley, Si mi biblioteca ardiera esta noche. Ensayos sobre arte, música, literatura y otras drogas

“…a medida que la lucha por recursos cada vez menores se recrudezca, estas dictaduras nacionales tenderán a convertirse en más y más opresivas en sus países y más cruelmente competitivas en el exterior.”
― Aldous Huxley, Si mi biblioteca ardiera esta noche. Ensayos sobre arte, música, literatura y otras drogas

“Se puede trasladar a una persona una fábrica, pero no se la puede obligar a pensar y a tener buenas ideas amenazándolas con la muerte.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, Por Que Fracasan los Paises( Los Origenes del Poder la Prosperidad y la Pobreza = Why Nations Fail)[SPA-POR QUE FRACASAN LOS PAISE][Spanish Edition][Paperback]

“The left denounces Kennedy for invading Cuba as casually as the right denounces him for invading it too timidly. One side sees Kennedy’s 'betrayal' and the other sees his 'failure to understand the situation.' The idea that the actual policy as carried out was the free synthesis of a totally absorbing internal conflict over which neither side had complete control does not seem to be widely entertained.”
― Carl Oglesby

“Cuba es nuestra tierra, pero no es más que un pueblo de campo, con dimensiones gigantes, donde el alcalde y los terratenientes tienen control de todo.”
― Amir Obregon Vargas

“We rebels get far too much credit for winning the revolution. Our enemies deserve most of the credit for being greedy cowards and idiots.”
― Célia Sanchez

“Patria es humanidad.”
― José Martí

“In the end, Cuba was the Mob’s most costly defeat. They had positioned themselves as legitimate businessmen in Cuba. They had placed all their faith in the brute power of American capitalism. The more Castro’s incipient Revolution gained traction, the more the mobsters invested, in the belief that they could drown out the will of the people through a massive infusion of capital. Rampant development would trump Revolution—or at least that was how it was supposed to go. In the end, the Cuban people made their own choice, and the mobsters were chased out of town.”
― T. J. English