Immigrants To The United States

"My continent is in distress and has been since the beginning of slavery. Leadership is a big problem. My hope is that things will change in Africa. Europe fought endlessly with itself in past centuries; now they have a European Union, not just in name, like the African Union. I hope that someday all the stupid wars on the African continent will end. I am amazed at the endurance of people, whether in Asia or Latin America or Africa, caught up in harsh situations."

"I’m fascinated with the process of creating a character and the freedom of the creative process. I’m discovering as well, learning myself. Since I only realized I had the gift ten years ago, I felt I needed to develop this. I also like fiction because it is not doctrinaire. It is exploratory and you are invited to come and see, just like Jesus first invited would-be disciples to ‘come and see’. What you do after seeing is left to you."

"For me, research is very important. But I do not begin with research. I begin with writing the story, which for me is the relationship between the characters. It is after I have written or pretty much have a sense of the story that I go and do research. I am conscious that I am writing about poor people for the most part. They don’t have much other than their space or dirt. I want to do my best to represent that well. I am also conscious that I am writing about other countries. I want to make sure I understand those cultures as best as possible and represent them well…"

"I regret not having taken more advantage of time — of the solidity of time, the intention of time. That’s why I don’t like to sleep much anymore. Had I known when I was 20 that I was going to be a musician, I would have taken to the piano, I would have taken the guitar more seriously, I would have perfected my knowledge of music."

"I still have the passion in my heart. If I don’t sing, my heart doesn’t beat so strong..."

"The feeling is the same. You close your eyes and you are on the stage and you feel that warmth from the people."

"Everything was a bigger struggle for me, everything required a bigger effort, so I understood that the sole basis for my future was discipline, and I maintain that discipline today, at 75...I mean, going out onstage to sing is an act of discipline and of absolute passion. Passion is natural, but discipline is willpower."

"The truth is I never should have gotten involved…I'm not heartless. In spite of what they say, I'm not a vendido (sellout). I'm not trying to be a coconut. Is it being a vendido to want the best for your people and to speak your mind?"

"I was more interested in how the Spanish American War was a historical divide in terms of what happened physically to Cuba. Cuba went from having a rural economy to a largely urbanized economy. It became increasingly defoliated as more land was planted with sugarcane, tobacco, and so on. This period was one of enormous upheaval, and the changes came on the very edge of a big empire-the United States-that was increasingly throwing its weight around the world. For all of those reasons, that juncture was crucial for Cuba’s history. To this day, things are playing out that were set in motion during the Spanish American War."

"I'm not so sure it's a good thing if we're not prepared, you know. I'm just concerned because of the...we're already the majority that's in jail, you know. We're the majority in certain things that I'm not proud of. We've got to get our ducats in line, we gotta be educated, and we've gotta make up our mind, you know, we gotta sure our loyalties aren't too south of the border, that's a mess down there with all the narcos."

"Memory is overrated. It is something that people think you can capture, but I think it is eternally elusive, subjective, and open to interpretation. That is part of its beauty, fascination, and frustration…"

"Poetry has always been the ignition for everything. It’s what ignites my brain, lights the imaginative forces. If poetry didn’t exist, I’d be doing something else entirely. That’s how crucial it is to me. For pleasure, for work, to get started in the day—I read poetry. And it’s the last thing I read at night. It fuels my dreams."

"None of my characters operate in a vacuum. You rarely see these tidy domestic dramas, mostly because of my own interest in a broader stage. I’m always interested in seeing how political events are shaking down within the individual and within the relationships between individuals, and also the kind of destruction this can cause in people’s lives and relationships…"

"Miami is more cosmopolitan. That is to say, it has a larger variety of Hispanics and they definitely have a different point of view, they're more conservative. They don't agree on a lot of issues with the rest of the Latino nation. But it's fine. My stuff has never been political, really. The older I get, the more I find comedy in minutia, the things we have in common, more family oriented stuff."

"[F]inancial markets are... a microcosm of the people and societies they serve. ...The extremes of market movements reflect the extremes of human nature and human emotion—from optimism and elation to pessimism and despair. In financial markets—as in life—rationality prevails most of the time."

"Dr. Doom is back—and age has done nothing to soften his views. ...In a speech on Wednesday evening to the National Economists Club in Washington... Kaufman argued that efforts to stabilize the financial system following the financial crisis may actually have heightened risks by encouraging more debt and increasing concentration among too-big-to-fail institutions. .. that financial innovations, such as securitization, have mainly spurred an explosion of debt, much of it for speculative purposes. ...As the quantity of credit has exploded, its quality has fallen... Deregulation fundamentally changed... from the era of clear divides between commercial and investment banking and government-set interest-rate caps. Regulation has been insufficient to balance “entrepreneurship and fiduciary responsibility,”... which was checked when Wall Street firms were partnerships, with partners’ net worth on the line."

"The federal made some efforts at regulation in 1900, by passing the Gold Standard Act, which allowed state banks to set up branches in small towns and ended the bimetalism debate by establishing gold as the only redeemable metal. Still, the vast majority of banks were local, single unit operations, and access to capital and credit... increasingly difficult as... business enterprises expanded rapidly."

"[R]icher nations have larger stock and bond markets than poorer ones, and the assets of financial intermediaries are much larger in relation to GDP."

"[A]n economy cannot grow and thrive without a strong commercial and investment banking infrastructure. Without the ability to create debt and equity instruments, the world's economies would not have advanced beyond their most rudimentary forms."

"Besides his business activities, Dr. Kaufman is active in a number of public and educational organizations, including New York University, Tel-Aviv University, the Institute of International Education, the Norton Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum, the UJA Federation, the Animal Medical Center, the Economic Club of New York, and the International Advisory Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences."

"[F]inancial markets can be considered one of the great wonders of the world."

"In 1900, industrial workers toiled 10 hours a day, 6 days a week and earning an average of $375 dollars a year. ...[W]orking conditions were typically unsanitary, unsafe, and often fatal, and there were few protections—whether from unions (...a meager 5 percent of industrial workers), employers, or government. ...[S]tate and federal governments frequently trotted out their armed militias to help suppress striking laborers. ...[W]hites lived an average of only 47 years, blacks a mere 33."

"[T]he nation's middle class was about to embark on an educational revolution that would help boost incomes to unimagined levels over the next three generations. ...Along with the obvious benefits to... individuals, education yielded enormous social and economic returns. Economists have found universal public education in America to be one of the leading engines of economic growth."

"In the 1890s and 1810s corporate consolidation inspired an enormous public outcry against the "trusts" (...big business). Newspapers overflowed with editorial deriding... "robber barons," and for the first time in American history the federal government stepped in to regulate... First came the ... designed to limit discriminatory railroad rates, and then the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890—Congresses' first attempt to constrain monopolistic practices. In practice, both acts proved to be weak against the predominant power of big business. For decades, the courts in effect made regulatory policy in how they interpreted... these two..."

"In 1900, two-thirds of the nation's... citizens still lived in rural communities... But that was changing rapidly (by 1920 more than half of all Americans lived in cities), thanks in large part to the explosive growth of manufacturing. ...[T]wo-thirds of the nation's output was in manufactured goods, even though manufacturing employed less than a quarter of the work force. The average plant producing petroleum, iron and steel, and textiles (the three leading industries)... were belied by the behemoth factories... Carnegie... christened the new century by selling his sprawling steel interests to J. P. Morgan, who promptly assembled the $1.4 billion United States Steel Corporation in 1901, the nation's first billion-dollar industry. Still, American manufacturing was then churning out a tiny fraction—roughly 1 percent...—of what today's cleaner and enormously more efficient plants produce."

"The professor that had the most influence on me was Marcus Nadler. ...As a teacher he had a rare ability to break down complex subjects into more palatable and understandable points. ...[H]e had a great capacity to simplify, to turn abstract ideas into practical applications. ...His lectures helped shape my belief that financial institutions and markets must balance entrepreneurial drive with responsibility. And his fairness and openness to opposing points of view influenced me to conclude that no one school of economic thought has a monopoly on wisdom."

"Billy Salomon... along with Charles Simon and Sidney Homer predicted... that research would become a critical function of the firm. ... Sidney was given a free hand in creating a bond market research operation. Years later, he wrote a... memoir... Fun with Bonds. Sidney was taken into the firm as a general partner when he was nearly 60 years old. ...such a step would be impossible today ...Sidney wrote with great clarity. ...I later came to appreciate his great historical sensibilities when he asked me to review and edit a draft of a book... A History of Interest Rates... covering 40 centuries and 40 nations. When Sidney and I met... he was looking for an assistant to help him build a research department devoted solely to money and bond markets."

"[D]uring the ... the federal government took large strides to regulate corporate America. ...[T]he federal government managed to break up several trusts (including the , American Tobacco, and ) and to establish the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve. In our time, business consolidation is evoking no similar reaction."

"Salomon's growth over the next generation would astound even its most optimistic partners. ...And as we would all see to our amazement, Salomon's rise was reflected in broader and equally dramatic transformations in the financial markets—as credit burgeoned, financial crises occasionally rocked the markets, prices and interest rates moved with new volatility, institutions underwent massive shifts, and monetary policy emerged as the dominant force in sustaining economic growth."

"[A] balance sheet is a snapshot of one moment in time, and thus presents a very limited view... To be a good banker, therefore, a business is much more than its balance sheet."

"[A] profit and loss statement is not simply a collection of figures, but rather—for the perceptive banker—a window into the nuts and bolts of the business, from its method of operation to its management philosophy."

"[G]ood bankers understand the shortcomings of accounting and know how to correct for them."

"The credit approval process began with the analysis of balance sheets and profit and loss statements. For those who know how to unlock their secrets, these documents can contain hidden traps, as I soon discovered—and was later reminded by some of the more spectacular credit problems of recent decades. Balance sheets tend to overstate assets and understate liabilities. Inventories commonly are assigned a large cash value after they have become obsolete, while receivables that are ostensibly current are quite often in arrears. Inadequate reserves constitute yet another common weakness that is poorly reflected... A receivable is a current asset, but it could be a slow asset."

"[F]inancial markets have evolved at least as dramatically as... manufacturing, work, technology, education, and business regulation since the turn of the previous century."

"Often the real value of management decisions does not become apparent until many years later. Perhaps what we should do is try to analyze the impact of decisions in any one period on longer-term performance. In the political arena, for example, why should we emphasize the skill and acumen of national policy-makers only on the new initiatives they introduce and legislate? Sometimes the events that do not materialize are more important than those that do. We should try to ascertain what decisions political leaders are undertaking that will benefit their nations subsequent to their terms in office."

"I take great pride in being an American. Consequently, when financial excess threatens our economic moorings, and thus our extraordinary dynamic and pluralistic nation, I have often spoken out for saner behavior and more effective policies."

"What fascinated me about Drucker, and still does, is how he infuses his broad perspective on business issues with philosophical and historical considerations."

"The proliferation of credit instruments, financing techniques, and vast matrices of trading and investing opportunities requires highly objective evaluations of risks and rewards, and a sense of historical perspective, if excessive risk taking is to be avoided."

"The current plethora of instant interpretations tends to emphasize the near-term without adequate regard for longer-term objectives. The problem is compounded by the compressed time scales within which business and government function."

"[T]he most striking feature of America's Gilded Age banking and financial markets is their lack of regulation. Wall Street was periodically upended by... colorful figures such as , Jim Fiske, and Jay Gould to manipulate prices and corner markets. The only force countervailing against such panics was a handful of more responsible investors, most notably J. P. Morgan... [who] engineered a successful rescue operation after the ... That episode inspired Congress to begin... plans for a central bank. After all, Morgan couldn't live forever."

"Judgements on the performance of our economy require a clearly defined objective. Too often... there are multiple and contradictory objectives. Unless we are clear on our... objectives, we are not able to evaluate performance as good or bad..."

"What made me want to write a novel was reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Garcia Marquez. I was turned on to that by a friend from Mexico who gave me the book. It was like Holy Communion or something. I said, "Yes!" Here is a novel that reads so lyrically and so poetically, and yet is a novel. It's a wonderful story. You want to know what happens to these people. And at the same time I saw the connection for me. It was like the Philippines was something I was carrying around and I didn't know what art form it would take to convey the story I wanted to tell, and I read that book and said, "That's it. One day I'm gonna do it.""

"For other people perhaps it was something else that brought them to certain conclusions about their lives and their identities. But, for me, film was truly one of the more powerful sources of entertainment, enlightenment, disillusionment. So, I use it a lot. In the writing of Dogeaters, especially, the movies were there because they were absolutely part of the fabric of my memory. Once I found that key, all the doors started swinging open in my imagination."

"I have been definitely influenced more by Latin American writers than by any other type of writer. They are very close in terms of voice their humor, their fatalism, their... well, that overused term "magical realism." It's a wonderful term that's just been used so much we don't know what it means anymore. But the way they can use language and visions and surrealism without being corny, and the humor that's always there, is very close to a Filipino sensibility. More so than-now this is a completely personal perception-other writers from Southeast Asia."

"I'm not a writer who works off an outline. I don't do file cards. Some writers know where they're going when they sit down to write a novel. I know there are certain things I want to include, but I'm character driven and if the characters keep moving and living and growing on me, the story unfolds. It's like a puzzle which starts falling into place. But I never know where I'm going when I start."

"If I were to write with that agenda in mind, then I'd destroy the writing. No, I write really because I have to and if the writing also destroys some of those myths and subverts forms and makes people question the very idea of the writer, the woman, the Filipino American, the whatever, great! (INTERVIEWER: Where does art have to come from to accomplish those kinds of ends? If you set out directly to accomplish them, you probably wouldn't have writing that is, in your opinion, worth reading? So, where does it have to come from?) JH: It has to come from the deepest, deepest, deepest insides of your soul. And it's got to be brutally honest. It's like pornography. You know it when you are doing it and you know when you're bullshitting. You know when you're being self-conscious and contrived and forcing something to be there because you want to make sure that people get the point. You know when that's happening. But if you just really listen to yourself and to your characters, you don't go for the easy stuff."

"A lot of novels about the Philippines or set in the Philippines don't cut it at all because they don't capture the crazy quilt atmosphere and the hybrid ambiance that occurs twenty-four hours a day. Things happening all the time, and noise and crowds and beautiful animals and amazing flora. At the same time, pollution and urbanization and sophistication and, you know, the jungle. How do you do all that? You can't tell it in a traditional way because the language dies. And also the music of the language itself, the music of the streets. How do convey that chaos? So, once I decided to go with it as I found it, I relaxed because at the risk of alienating some readers, this was the way the novel had to be presented."

"It’s best if you go out in the world knowing more than one language, I don’t care what the language is. It’s good for your brain to dream in another language. It gives you a clue, another perspective, a way of understanding, some compassion for other people—even if it’s just because you know how to joke in another language. (1991)"

"The work involved in writing a novel is completely solitary, unlike playwriting. And the struggle is often painful. There is no one to turn to but yourself. You confront your own demons in order to dig deep and come up with something risky and powerful. Playwriting is the exact opposite process for me because it's so collaborative. If you're blessed with a terrific cast, a visionary director, an innovative sound and design team, then your play has a ninety-nine percent chance of being realized in the best possible way. I think people forget -- even some of my most aware graduate students! -- that writing is hard work. Period."

"you can never see any of your characters as monsters; I think then you'd write a really terrible book. Everyone is a complicated and flawed human being (Callaloo, Fall 2008)"