Trips are part of humanity. Emigration is a part of humanity. And it's ever more dynamic due to globalization.

In Cuba and specifically in Havana there's a sort of energy that turns every situation into something unexpected.

I don't think that the reality of Cuba is perfect, but it doesn't cleave to the negativity, either, with which some people see it.

Cuban public is special - they participate, generate a lot of energy, both in a positive and negative sense. It's always an expressive audience.

I think that this necessity to travel, to see, it's part of human nature.

The base of artistic pursuit is ambivalence and complexity. And that's what I try to do.

What is happiness to me is not necessarily for you. Someone once said, there are three truths: your truth, my truth and the truth. And I think that's true.

It's true that in Cuba there are double standards, there's opportunism, and there is a lack of freedom in some ways.

The magic of film isn't just because of the big screen, or the acoustics, but the ineffable shared experience of going to the movies.

The Cuban public is hugely cinephile. It's a shame that most of the movie theaters are so deteriorated. The sense of spectacle has been lost a little, but even so, people continue to go.

In all of my movies I've tried to address the need for man - not just Cubans - to have a dream and to fight for that dream, even when he doesn't achieve it. It's a form of happiness.

Time is your acquaintance. Life is your friend. Death is your opponent. Eternity is your companion.

Living is worth the effort if only because without life we could not read or imagine stories.

With all deference to Chairman Mao and other authors whose quotations derive from longer works, it seemed that I was becoming the world's first writer of self-contained ready-made quotations.

We have no hope and yet we live in longing.

. . . it is a corrupting thing to live one's real life in secret. One should live with the stream of life, not against it.

You shouldn't say it is not good. You should say, you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

Look within, get depressed; Look around, get distressed; Look to Jesus, find perfect rest.

Man's destiny lies half within himself, half without. To advance in either half at the expense of the other is literally insane.

Have a goal in life. When water is everywhere, it is a flood, but if it is in between banks, it is a river. It is nice to have a goal, so your life force gets channelized!

Trying your best to bring the water to your eyes, thinking it might stop her from woopin' your behind.