people-from-havana

"He soon attained to prominence through the interest he manifested in questions that concerned education and the public good."

"Really, we could just refer you to the drum fill in Slayer’s “Angel of Death” and rest the case at that. But the so-called “Godfather of Double Bass” has so much more to offer. Endlessly innovative and tirelessly prolific, the Cuban-American virtuoso has played with everyone from Suicidal Tendencies, Testament and the Misfits to more avant-leaning rock bands such as Fantômas and Mr. Bungle — which doesn’t even cover his totally left-field collaborations with classical musician Lorenzo Arruga and fine artist Matthew Barney. Lombardo is the master and your clear pick as No. 1."

"Without a doubt the best metal drummer on the planet! His speed and footwork completely set him apart from all other drummers from early Slayer to present day. I’ve been lucky to witness him playing close up, and nobody else comes close to his drumming. In my opinion, he is the kingpin of the way metal drummers play today."

"Dave Lombardo is my biggest influence, of course. If it wasn't for him, I probably wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. He's the king of thrash, double bass and all that, so as a teenager, hearing him play in the mid-'80s, obviously I wasn't playing at that point yet — I [was] just starting out — so that really solidified me wanting to play the way I play today, what he was doing and still is doing."

"For us Americans, the principle of religious freedom is a basic. But as in any human relationship, it happens like in any dance, the moment I take a step forward, my partner takes one backwards, while the next time the opposite happens. It's the art of compromise, in its noblest sense, and it's a success of the common ground and the common good."

"We think that the Eucharist is the source and summit of the life of the Church and for this we do not abandon its essential importance."

"From our own little Caribbean island the cry resounds: "I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church." This ecclesial and social event is a message and a challenge. We needn't wait for the leaders of nations to be reconciled or come to an agreement. We are already experiencing the reality of reconciliation and fraternal communion with our sister churches."

"No other Hispanic community in the United States has felt as intensely and viciously as the Cubans the weight of communist oppression and the loss of freedom in their ancestral nation. The Cuban exile community closely monitors what happens in Cuba: the continuing repression and persecution against any who think and act differently from what the totalitarian state dictates. The Cuban exile community knows too much about Cuba to believe in banalities about the “equality” and “justice” brought about by socialism in Cuba."

"Only my faith and hope in that loving God who wants the good for all his sons enabled me to grow in spirit and strengthened me for the ups and downs of life. That is why I was able to succeed and I thank my Lord again and again."

"Poll after phony poll, decade after decade, has decreed the end of the Cuban exile freedom movement. Pundits spewing ideological lines have rambled on about how young Cubans, turning away from their parents, seek to engage and open up to Castroism. These lies have not weakened the community for, in exile, Cubans comprise a young nation with deep truths. As in 1868, they still deeply believe in individual freedom, in the right to private property, in the right to life, in the rule of law. They deeply love America because it has institutionally enshrined these values and thereby made possible the opportunity to prosper, to be self-reliant, to be free. As a free people, they hold loyalty as a value and are deeply loyal to America."

"Filmmaking is hard work, and there are plenty of times when you're just exhausted, and you haven't slept in a while, and you're just watching, and you're looking at something, and you're thinking, "Man, this is not going to work, this is going to be the stupidest thing.""

"When you’re making a film, you come up with so much material and so much of that material ends up going unused. So, I think transmedia gives you a chance to use that extra material. You know, with Blair Witch we did a whole documentary using at least 50% of unused footage from the first movie. So as a filmmaker, it’s a great opportunity to dive into your story more and gives you a chance to explore any unused ideas. You know, it opens things up and keeps things fresh. Especially because when you write a film, shoot a film, and edit a film, you’re stuck in that world and narrative for so long and I think transmedia gives you a great opportunity to step outside of that for a moment and work on something else without abandoning the project entirely."

"I scare easily! I think that’s part of the reason I can make horror movies, I can relate to just being scared."

"I wrote the play in English because I wanted non-Latinos to see it. I tried to draw Americans into the world of the play and to have them realize that, but for an accident at birth, they, too, might have found themselves crossing a terrible desert in search of a better life…"

"Myths die hard. We humans define ourselves by the ideological teams we join. We are liberals or conservatives, Christians or atheists, Yankee fans or Red Sox fans. We filter facts to conform to our group’s ideology and then defend that ideology to the death. Only a truly momentous event can make us change teams…"

"My play attempts to put a human face on the immigration debate. It argues that the undocumented Mexican worker and the American working man have more in common with each other than they do with the businessmen and politicians who profit from their plight…"

"I was having dinner at a restaurant in Miami, and when the waiter offered me coffee, he asked me if I took it with or without sugar…I said, ‘Chico, you’re Cuban. How can you even ask that? With sugar!’"

"Everybody looks at Celia Cruz and thinks, she is very happy…But I don't have a mother, a father, I don't have a country - I only have Pedro."

"There are certain artists who belong to all the people, everywhere, all the time. The list of singers, musicians, and poets must include David the harpist from the Old Testament, Aesop the Storyteller, Omar Khayyam the Tent Maker, Shakespeare the Bard of Avon, Louis Armstrong the genius of New Orleans, Om Kalsoum the soul of Egypt, Frank Sinatra, Mahalia Jackson, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Charles. The names could go on until there was no breath to announce them, but the name of Celia Cruz, the great Cuban singer will always figure among them as one who belonged to all people. Her songs in Spanish were weighted with sympathy for the human spirit...Cruz came to the United States and played in a theater on Upper Broadway in New York City and I went to see her every day of her stay. She exploded on the stage and was sensual and touchingly present. From her, I learned to bring everything I had onto the stage with me. And now, some forty-plus years later, without music and by simply reading, I am able to read poetry and satisfy audiences. Much of the presence I bring to my performance, I learned from Celia Cruz. All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us all that we are more alike than we are unalike."

"Women are afraid to sing salsa…I don't know why; maybe they think it's for men. I am not a composer, or a soneo, a singer and a poet, which is very difficult. But I think everybody can sing everything."

"When people hear me sing…I want them to be happy, happy, happy. I don't want them thinking about when there's not any money, or when there's fighting at home. My message is always felicidad - happiness."

"Hopefully, these characters bring us closer to a sense of self: honest and honored. Icons: Toussaint Louverture to José Martí to lesser known heroes, Atahualpa and Denmark Vesey. We lace our visions with Celia Cruz and Aretha Franklin."

"I never talk about age, but I was born singing. My mother, Catalina, told me that at 9 or 10 months of age I’d wake up in the middle of the night, 2 or 3 in the morning, singing "esta muchachita va a trabajar de noche". Pues la viejita no se equivocó."

"The teenagers have been sucked into American culture overnight, while their parents are concerned with preserving roots."

"We would get letters from Nebraska. I’ve talked to Latin Americans, whether they’re from Colombia [or elsewhere], and they have somebody like that in their family…If you make it authentic, if it touches you, it doesn’t have to be your experience."

"I was living in Miami. Some people would say, ‘You were very young when you came from Cuba. How did you know us?’ They think I’m portraying Cuba, I said, ‘No, I’m portraying Miami. I’m portraying what I saw in Miami.’"

"We went to the visual and the acting. You would lose some jokes if you didn’t speak both languages, but you didn’t lose the thrust."

"Art is something you don’t just reproduce—what you see everyday doesn’t seem to be inspiring to them. But you do something with it so that it’s not bound by the law of reality. My work has always had that influence. I’ve never felt that it was necessary at all to write realistic plays…"

"My plays are clean. Most plays have four, five vital moments in the play and the rest of the play is just getting to it. It’s just fill. I don’t know why, whether it’s just to create the sense that it’s real or that you have to spend two hours to experience the power (you have to see not just snapshots). But I find it very boring. I go to sleep when I see plays like that, and I go to sleep writing it…"

"Theater is a service where the god keeps changing…Sometimes it’s the actor. Sometimes it’s the director. Sometimes it’s the stage manager. Sometimes, but almost never, it’s the playwright."

"Having a play directed by someone else is like going to a religious school when you’re a child, you listen and obey…"

"I find solace in my country’s music, all my life. It’s been a great inspiration to me. In ‘The Lost City,’ the protagonist of the movie is the music. I tried to weave the elements of the Cuban culture, and historical elements that happened at that time. [It’s] a very classical film in a way, the structure using a family as a microcosm of what is going on in the society, brothers against brothers politically, a father trying to keep his family together, impossible love: You can love her but you can’t be with her, which is the relationship of every exile in the world with his home country."

"I'm American completely, and I think I appreciate America more than a lot of Americans do…In fact I know I do. Because America has offered me the freedoms that were taken away from me in Cuba, and so I have an enormous appreciation and respect and gratitude for that country, and I value what it stands for."

"I ask myself those questions sometimes…But no, I think you're a slave to your own sensibility, and your own artistic desires and dreams, and I'm still motivated by them. I'm certainly not going to wait around for someone from Hollywood to call me. I can't control if anyone's thinking of me, or wants to put me in a movie, I can't control that. So I don't preoccupy myself with that world, because that world's an ever-changing animal, and there are new flavours of the month every month, and you might be one, one month, and then not the next. I'm blessed that I've been in that game in my life, but what I'm concerned with on a daily level is what I'm interested in."

"I was born in Havana and my family left when I was five-and-a-half. I remember the transition and some memories of being in Havana. I tried to analyze this and I think all exiles who have to leave a country you love, develop a profound nostalgia for where you were born but can no longer be there – like an impossible love. You protect those memories and don’t take them for granted. It’s different for someone who grew up and still lives in the same city because they do take their memories for granted. For me, I’m very nostalgic – not only about my time in Havana, but my 30 years in Miami Beach. All those memories are pretty vivid and I guard and cherish them. I also use those recollections in my work."

"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…"

"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."

"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…"

"Animals shouldn't be used, tortured in any kind of way. … So what I would say to my fans is to … get more information about it because anyone that has a heart will have compassion towards them. And just change your thought process, and in changing that, we might change the whole world."

"[A year after going vegetarian] I feel really healthy, and it works on so many different levels, including the condition of my skin."

"I’m Cuban, so we grew up eating meat. But I didn’t like it. I’d say, ‘Rice and black beans is just fine with me.’ But my mother, you know, would say, ‘Tu estas muy flaca!’ Then one day I saw my dad kill a chicken and ever since then I was grossed out by chicken."

"Direct, participatory and responsive democracy has been shown to be conducive to achieving a more just world order. Only such an approach will allow progressing from predator societies to human rights oriented societies."

"Democracy means a genuine correlation between the will of the people and legislation and policies that affect them, be it domestic or international."

"Direct democracy is undoubtedly one of the most efficient, reliable and transparent methods to determine the will of the people."

"States have the sacred duty to ensure peace, while individuals and peoples have the right to peace."

"Neither the right of self-determination nor the principle of territorial integrity is absolute."

"Democracy must be lived and practiced every day. It entails much more than periodic voting, which in many cases is only pro forma, in the absence of public influence on the choice of candidates and scarce possibility of policy change."

"Parliaments that do not genuinely represent, but act as if they had a blank check for x number of years lose their legitimacy."

"A violation of the right of self-determination gives rise to a legitimate human rights claim by individuals and groups and triggers State responsibility to make reparation."