Since the Cuban Revolution and since the invasion of Santo Domingo a state of emergency has existed in Latin America. The Marines shoot at anything that moves, regardless of partyaffiliation.

We are never completely contemporaneous with our present. History advances in disguise; it appears on stage wearing a mask of the preceding scene, and we tend to lose the meaning of the play.

The prime role of a leader is to offer an example of courage and sacrifice.

God, a born extremist, is the diplomat's worst enemy. Quite apart from the fact that His decrees are irrevocable, the Absolute will not allow anyone to relativize matters.

Difference is not the opposite of harmony but its condition.

Books were the sustenance of God. And His munitions.

If you're going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet.

Learning is the only game worth playing in life.

It's as if my footprints were already on the road before I even got there.I walk into them, my waiting footprints.

Great things seem complex and cause the nations to rush towards the minor things that seem easy to reach, hence, they perish. And again my memory echoes…my people die for lack of knowledge.

Great triumphs of engineering genius—the locomotive, the truss bridge, the steel rail— ... are rather invention than engineering proper.

Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance.

I live a normal life.

The first thing that I do when I come out every night is to look at the faces in front of me, very individually.

Surely no one can be sure he has visited Cienega; people say to themselves, do they not: 'Was it a vision; or have I, some time or other, seen dusk in a valley like this?'

Self-restraint may be alien to the human temperament, but humanity without restraint will dig its own grave.