Reinaldo Arenas Quotes & Sayings

My sexual activity was all with animals. First there were the hens, then the goats and the sows, and after I had grown up some more, the mares. — Reinaldo Arenas

Leonardo da Vinci was homosexual, so was Michelangelo, Socrates, Shakespeare, and almost every other figure that has formed what we have come to understand as beauty. — Reinaldo Arenas

These, to be sure, were farfetched hopes, hopes born of despair, but hope is, after all, mostly for the desperate. — Reinaldo Arenas

Cuba will be free. I already am. — Reinaldo Arenas

To discover a city is in itself a unique event, but when we have the privilege of sharing it with friends most dear to us, it becomes a once-in-a-lifetime experience. — Reinaldo Arenas

All the literature of this century is somewhat burdened by the theme of uprootedness. — Reinaldo Arenas

Before getting to my mother's house, I would always think of her on the porch or even on the street, sweeping. She had a light way of sweeping, as if removing the dirt were not as important as moving the broom over the ground. Her way of sweeping was symbolic; so airy, so fragile, with a broom she tried to sweep away all the horrors, all the loneliness, all the misery that had accompanied her all her life ... — Reinaldo Arenas

Being a fugitive living in the woods at the time, I had to write before it got dark. Now darkness was approaching again, only more insidiously. — Reinaldo Arenas

Trees have a secret life that is only revealed to those willing to climb them. — Reinaldo Arenas

Mine is not an obedient writing. I think that literature as any art has to be irreverent. — Reinaldo Arenas

I have always considered it despicable to grovel for your life as if life were a favor. If you cannot live the way you want, there is no point in living — Reinaldo Arenas

All this had already given us an inkling of what the new regime was about. There was still some hope, however. There is always some hope, especially for cowards. I was one of them, one of those cowardly or hopeful young men who still thought the government had something to offer. — Reinaldo Arenas

Like a lightning bug ... Like a lightning bug? ... Yes, just like a night lightning bug; because there are day lightning bugs too - even if nobody has ever seen one, I know there are some, and I know the day lightning bugs are the cockroaches that since they can't light up, people kill them. — Reinaldo Arenas