Paz

“We are inclined to find the Scottish r's somewhat inadequate, while we admire the refined British who pronounce the intervocalic or nearly aspirated final r's so dryly—as opposed to the coarser Americans who relish chewing on long, cavernous, supersalivated r's, whatever the letter's position in the word.”
― Caetano Veloso, Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil

“In fact what estranged me most from rock, and from that entire impulse toward Americanization, was that it reached me without carrying any trace of rebellion.”
― Caetano Veloso, Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil

“For an immigrant, an accent may be a form of vengeance, a way of insulting the language that constrains him. In the language he does not esteem, he will mumble only the words necessary to his work and daily life, always the same words, not one more. And even these he shall forget at the end of his life, to return to the vocabulary of childhood. Just as the names of those around us are forgotten when the memory begins to lose water, as a swimming pool slowly drains away, as yesterday is forgotten while our deepest memories remain. But for one who had adopted a foreign tongue as if hand-picking his own mother, for one who had sought out and loved every last one of its words, the persistence of an accent was an unfair punishment.”
― Chico Buarque, Budapeste

“I could not help remembering that I myself had uttered to a journalist in 1967, during the dawn of tropicalismo, a sentence that Tom Zé would soon use in a song resonant with the movement: "I am Bahian and I am a foreigner." In fact, we had understood that in order to do what we believed necessary, we had to rid ourselves of Brazil as we knew it. We had to destroy the Brazil of the nationalists, we had to go deeper and pulverize the image of Brazil as being exclusively identified with Rio.”
― Caetano Veloso, Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil