Dominican Quotes & Sayings

It's going to be crazy. I'm guessing when we play against the Dominicans, half the field will be Dominican fans and half will be Puerto Rican fans. With all the big-time players in the World Classic, it's going to be huge. — Carlos Beltran

I've dated interracially a lot. I grew up in Harlem, so I've dated Latins, Dominican, Guyanese, Cuban, black, white. — Mekhi Phifer

Last summer had meant lots of Sam Adams Summer Ale by herself on hot weekend days when it seemed like just her and the Dominican Day parade. — Stephanie Clifford

I entered the diocesan seminary. I liked the Dominicans, and I had Dominican friends. But then I chose the Society of Jesus, which I knew well because the seminary was entrusted to the Jesuits. Three things in particular struck me about the Society: the missionary spirit, community and discipline. — Pope Francis

One day the "Good Morning Everyone" team announces that the government of the Dominican Republic has offered to bring all thirty-three miners and their families to a relaxing resort in that Caribbean island nation. — Hector Tobar

As far as preference between fall and spring collections, I have none that I prefer to design. With fall you have a lot more items, but of course I am from the Dominican Republic, so I love the warm weather. — Oscar De La Renta

I'm a big fan of Caribbean food, Spanish food, Dominican food - like rice and beans. Hot sauce just adds a different layer of boom to the food, you feel me? — Theophilus London

Legislation for the Caribbean basin has led to more jobs in the Dominican Republic. — Elliott Abrams

When did this fiend strike last?"
Ah ... The last report was from the Dominican Republic. That was, let me see, two nights ago."
Dominican Republic! Why in the world would he go there?"
Exactly what I would like to know. — Anne Rice

Even as a small child, I wondered why the Dominican nuns who educated me were subservient to the Jesuit priests who educated my brothers. — Janine Di Giovanni

I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. — Smedley Butler

Sammy Sosa grew up without a father in the back of a converted public hospital in San Pedro de Macoris, a dusty seaside town in the Dominican Republic. His father, Juan Montero, died when Sosa was 5. — Bill Dedman

I have a very powerful sense of place, but I have a very powerful sense of being a migrant, so it's both. It seems like I'm always leaving my home. That's part of the formula. I love the Dominican Republic. I go back all the time. I love New Jersey. Go back all the time. — Junot Diaz

People can say what they want, but historically, feminism in the Dominican Republic has been extremely strong. — Junot Diaz

You're Dominican only if you do this, this, and that. And if you do this and that, you'll be accepted to a certain degree and if you don't, people will scorn you for it. — Junot Diaz

The whole history between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is complicated. We share the island of Hispaniola, and Haiti occupied the Dominican Republic for twenty-two years after 1804 for fear that the French and Spanish would come back and reinstitute slavery. So we have this unique situation of being two independent nations on the same island, but with each community having its own grievance. — Edwidge Danticat

Jazz has a strong following in certain circles and there are annual jazz festivals in Puerto Plata and at Casa de Teatro in the capital. Grammy-winning Dominican jazz pianist Michael Camilo has had success on a global level. The classical music and ballet — Ginnie Bedggood

On Veterans Day, I can't help think of my uncles who volunteered for the service after fleeing a brutal regime in the Dominican Republic. They hadn't been in America long, but they were already so grateful for its opportunities that they were eager to serve. — Thomas Perez

Students may feel the criticism is harsh, but I think it's possible they haven't had criticism before. It's my job to point out when something is badly done, or when there's no point of view. To build a brand you have to have something about you. If not personality, then some thought process. I'm 40, and they're young, so they're meant to be informing me. They should be bringing me a book or something that I haven't seen, not like some obscure chant book by Dominican monks, but an image of the way they see the world. — Louise Wilson

The trouble is that after nine years as a Jack of all trades and Master of the Dominican Order, I have no expertise on anything except airports and exotic foods. — Timothy Radcliffe

Between 1831 and 1891, US armed forces - usually the Marines - invaded Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama, Colombia, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Brazil, Haiti, Argentina, and Chile a total of thirty-one times, a fact not many of us are informed about in school. The Marines intermittently occupied Nicaragua form 1909 to 1933, Mexico from 1914 to 1919, and Panama from 1903 to 1914. To 'restore order' the Marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, killing over two thousand Haitians who resisted 'pacification.' — Michael Parenti

The next day at breakfast he asked his mother: Am I ugly? She sighed. Well, hijo, you certainly don't take after me. Dominican parents! You got to love them! — Junot Diaz

We knew Down South. Everyone had one. Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico. — Jacqueline Woodson

My parents, fleeing a repressive regime in the Dominican Republic, were embraced by this country and taught us to love it in return. After my father served proudly in the U.S. Army, they settled in Buffalo, N.Y., and were able to live the American Dream. — Thomas Perez

When people are always telling you that you have to have a lot of women, women are very important, there's a chance that you might actually begin to observe them on a more fundamental level. Then you get so much focus that one day you might actually see. Dominican men are told to look at women all the time, but they're definitely not told to see them. — Junot Diaz

We have a pride of who we are as Latinos, regardless if we're Puerto Rican, Dominican, Venezuelan, and we're very proud of our customs and our history and our traditions and who we are. — Juan Luis Guerra

From Arawaks he later met on Hispaniola (the island of the Dominican Republic and Haiti) he learned of other people to the south, whom the Spanish called the Cariba or Caniba, from which we get the words "Caribbean" and "cannibal. — Lincoln Paine

My grandmother was this amazing woman in the Dominican Republic who used to read tea leaves and palms. She would cure people in her neighborhood by going into her garden, plucking a couple of leaves, and brewing teas. — Selenis Leyva

You, Yunior, have a girlfriend named Alma, who has a long tender horse neck and a big Dominican ass that seems to exist in a fourth dimension beyond jeans. An ass that could drag the moon out of orbit. An ass she never liked until she met you. Ain't a day that passes that you don't want to press your face against that ass or bite the delicate sliding tendons of her neck. You love how she shivers when you bite, how she fights you with those arms that are so skinny they belong on an after-school special. — Junot Diaz

People ask me all the time how I got hired onto the Office. Another common question is how do I manage to stay so down-to-earth in the face of such incredible success? ... A third frequently asked question is: "Girl, where you from? Trinidad? Guyana? Dominican Republic? You married? You got kids?" This is mostly asked by guys on the sidewalk selling I LOVE NEW YORK paraphernalia in New York City. — Mindy Kaling

The Dominican Republic says 'We're black behind the ears.' And in Mexico, 'there's a black grandma in the closet.' They know, they've just been intermarrying for a long time. But if we did the DNA of everyone in Mexico a whole lot of people would have a whole lot of black in them. — Henry Louis Gates

As a Dominican man, you're socialized to be a playboy. You spend a lot of time being taught that women are important, but without the really positive framework of why. You figure out quickly it's because of culo (ass). But there is a sense that it's not that simple. — Junot Diaz

I believe it is my responsibility to do what I can for children and people with Down syndrome as well as in my native Dominican Republic. — Albert Pujols

If everyone could just live near the ocean, I think we'd all be happier. It's hard to be down about anything knee deep in the sand. — Crystal Woods

But no matter what the truth, remember: Dominicans are Caribbean and therefore have an extraordinary tolerance for extreme phenomena — Junot Diaz

I spoke English at school and Spanish at home, and I'm always eating Dominican food, listening to Dominican music. — Prince Royce

I was neither black enough for the black kids or Dominican enough for the Dominican kids. I didn't have a safe category. — Junot Diaz

I want to be known as Dominican-that's what I am, 100 percent ... I have a duty and responsibility to continue the legacy of Dominicans in baseball. — Alex Rodriguez

A message of consolation to Greek brothers in their prison camps, and to my Haitian brothers and Nicaraguan brothers and Dominican brothers and South African brothers and Spanish brothers and to my brothers in South Vietnam, all in their prison camps: You are in the free world! — E.L. Doctorow

It takes no more intellectual effort than that exercised in choosing a pair of socks, or slicing a piece of cheesecake, to understand that the Dominican friar, St. Thomas Aquinas, was emphatically, hopelessly wrong. It was not goodness that spilled out into the world, shaping that which had no shape, bonum diffusivum sui, but a spectacular weave of perversion born of a simple but ultimately irresistible compulsion to explore and experience through evolving proxies that single thing an uncreated aseitic being - God - could never alone explore or ever directly experience: death, and all the exotic abstractions associated to it. — John Zande

My first year in Japan was very tough, just like my first year in the minors. But at least there I had a lot of Dominican people and Latin people I can talk to. If you don't have anybody to talk to, you can get depressed. But if you find someone who talks your language, it's easier. — Alfonso Soriano

The DOCF all started when I made a trip to a local hospital in the Dominican Republic. I was visiting children who had received life-saving heart care operations. I couldn't help but think that in another life, one of these kids could be my own son. If it wasn't for baseball, I may have remained in the Dominican Republic and who knows where life would have taken me. It was then that I knew that I had to use the gift that I received, to play baseball, to do whatever I could to give back. — David Ortiz

My favorite Dominican dish to indulge in is anything with crab. — Pharrell Williams

If you go to the craft market you will see them everywhere. They represent the mix of cultures and races here in the Dominican Republic, that are the result of centuries of international commerce, colonization, conquest, and the slave trade. The facelessness means that there is no 'typical' Dominican woman. — Sandra Rodriguez Barron

Cannibalism is a problem. In many cases the practice is rooted in ritual and superstition rather than gastronomy, but not always. A French Dominican in the seventeenth century observed that the Caribs had most decided notions of the relative merits of their enemies. As one would expect, the French were delicious, by far the best. This is no surprise, even allowing for nationalism. The English came next, I'm glad to say. The Dutch were dull and stodgy and the Spaniards so stringy, they were hardly a meal at all, even boiled. All this sounds sadly like gluttony. - PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR — Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

When I was living in the Dominican Republic, the local kids became a part of my family. — Maika Monroe

A Dominican monk, Father Henri Didon, used it as a watchword for his pupils in sports at Arcueil College in Paris. Baron Pierre De Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, made it the Olympic Games ideal adopted at the Antwerp Games in 1920. I never mentioned winning to my players. I mentioned constantly that all I wanted them to do was the best they could. If they're good enough, the score will be to their liking; if they're not, it won't be but that's nothing to hang their head about. Sometimes the other fellow is just better than you are. — John Wooden

I was born in Texas and I lived there 'till I was 8. Then I moved to the Dominican Republic with my mom, lived there for two years and forgot every word of English I knew. — Michelle Rodriguez

I have not broken the laws of the United States or the laws of the Dominican Republic. — Sammy Sosa

When we are youths in the Dominican, we pick up bats and balls because baseball is part of what we grow up with. The fun feeling you get playing keeps your head up when you encounter difficult times. — Vladimir Guerrero

I'm made in the Dominican. I'm from baseball country. — Robinson Cano

The reader who is only superficially familiar with Caribbean affairs may find the materials of this volume strange. The extent to which violence, both open and covert, is a constant factor in the life of the region may cause surprise. The incongruous and rather unreal quality of many events, whether fanciful or farcical in appearance, may also prove unexpected. If the reader is inclined to doubt the authenticity of certain events, viewing them as too implausible to be true, he may be assured that many things even more strange, which are possibly and even probably true, have been omitted because their accuracy could not be satisfactorily established. Nothing is included here that does not come from sources considered sound. Nothing is included that has not been subjected to every possible verification. — Robert D. Crassweller

We all should be proud of the United States. For those of us that came from the Dominican, we've been able to come here, work, make money and become somebody in our lives. We've gotten a huge opportunity from the U.S. — Robinson Cano

Just about every Latin American country has sent players to the big leagues, from the Dominican Republic to Costa Rica. — Cheech Marin

My parents are Dominican. I would always go to the Dominican Republic, and I fell in love with Bachata, which comes from the Dominican Republic. — Prince Royce

I spend more time in New York than the Dominican. I play here, I live here, so why not become a citizen? — Robinson Cano

I represent New York, I represent the Bronx, I represent the Dominican Republic. And I always have that in mind with everything that I do. — Prince Royce

We still have our people working in the cane fields in the Dominican Republic. People are still repatriated all the time from the Dominican Republic to Haiti. Some tell of being taken off buses because they looked Haitian, and their families have been in the Dominican Republic for generations. Haitian children born in the Dominican Republic still can't go to school and are forced to work in the sugarcane fields. — Edwidge Danticat

You know all about love, but that is not enough. You must also learn that hate comes from God as well, that it too is in the Lord's service. And in times like these, with the world fallen to the state it has, hate serves God more than love. — Nikos Kazantzakis

On that day so long ago, in the year nineteen hundred and thirty-seven, in the Massacre River, my mother did fly. Weighted down by my body inside hers, she leaped from Dominican soil into the water, and out again on the Haitian side of the river. She glowed red when she came out, blood clinging to her skin, which at that moment looked as though it were in flames. — Edwidge Danticat

He undressed and, wearing slippers and a robe, went to the bathroom to shave. He turned on the radio. They read the newspapers on the Dominican Voice and Caribbean Radio. Until a few years ago the news bulletins had begun at five. But when his brother Petan, the owner of the Dominican Voice, found out that he woke at four, he moved the newscasts up an hour. The other stations followed suit. They knew he listened to the radio while he shaved, bathed, and dressed, and they were painstakingly careful. — Mario Vargas-Llosa

I am Dominican American. My father was born and raised in the U.S. and his heritage is German and Eastern European, and my mother hails from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. — Monica Raymund

By the late 1970s, repression and economic chaos were causing increasing unrest throughout Latin America. Army strongmen were forced to cede power in Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic. — Stephen Kinzer

For anyone inclined to caricature environmental history as 'environmental determinism,' the contrasting histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti provide a useful antidote. Yes, environmental problems do constrain human societies, but the societies' responses also make a difference. — Jared Diamond

When I was a kid, I believed in Santa Claus. But it was very tough because in the Dominican ... there are not a lot of rich people there. — Alfonso Soriano

Shot at twenty-seven times - what a Dominican number ... — Junot Diaz

Them. We were the persons who made this good beginning, and it was not until two years later, when we had made the conquest, and introduced good morals and better manners among the inhabitants, that the pious Franciscan brothers arrived, and three or four years after the virtuous monks of the Dominican order, who further continued the good work, and spread Christianity through the country. The first part of the work, however, next to the Almighty, was done by us, the true Conquistadores, who subdued the country, and by the Brothers of Charity, who accompanied — Bernal Diaz Del Castillo

Tell her that you love her hair, that you love her skin, her lips, because, in truth, you love them more than you love your own. — Junot Diaz

For my first three books the setting (or place if you will) has always been a given - N.J. and the Dominican Republic and some N.Y.C. - so from one perspective you could say that the place in my work always comes first. — Junot Diaz

This is the one who will find us. He's the one who will lead them all back to me someday. He's the explorer. El curioso. — Sandra Rodriguez Barron

Ask any of your elders and they will tell you: Trujillo might have been a dictator, but, he was a Dominican dictator, which is another way of saying he was the number-one bellaco in the country. — Junot Diaz

I tell people all of the time that they would make any show in this business - whether it's black, white, Hispanic, Jewish, Colombian, Dominican - whatever. They'll make it if it sells. It's a business. It's not personal. — Kirk Acevedo

One joke has a Franciscan, a Dominican, and a Jesuit celebrating Mass together when the lights suddenly go out in the church. The Franciscan praises the chance to live more simply. The Dominican gives a learned homily on how God brings light to the world. The Jesuit goes to the basement to fix the fuses. — James Martin

As to the efficacy of the policy recommended by Rostow, it speaks for itself: no country, once underdeveloped, ever managed to develop By Rostow's stages. Is that why Rostow is now trying to help the people of Vietnam, the Congo, the Dominican Republic, and other underdeveloped countries to overcome the empirical, theoretical, and policy shortcomings of his manifestly non-communist intellectual aid to economic development and cultural change by bombs, napalm, chemical and biological weapons, and military occupation? — Andre Gunder Frank

I have never injected myself or had anyone inject me with anything. I have not broken the laws of the United States or the laws of the Dominican Republic. I have been tested as recently as 2004, and I am clean. — Sammy Sosa

The Ecuadorian, Mexican, Dominican and Salvadorian cooks I've worked with over the years make most CIA-educated white boys look like clumsy, sniveling little punks. In — Anthony Bourdain

There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought. And though I knew that England then was groaning loudest under the prelatical yoke, nevertheless I took it as a pledge of future happiness, that other nations were so persuaded of her liberty. Yet was it beyond my hope that those worthies were then breathing in her air, who should be her leaders to such a deliverance, as shall never be forgotten by any revolution of time that this world hath to finish. — John Milton

The best way to help the Latino community is to give back. I love giving back; I'm quiet about God and what I do, but we do a lot in the Dominican Republic. — Daddy Yankee

I doubt that I can speak for all Dominican men but I doubt they can either. — Junot Diaz

I keep active because I have not announced my retirement, because that is something that takes time and you have to plan it. Plus, it is something that the Dominican people expected. — Pedro Martinez

My favorite vacation spot is a beautiful beach. I've been to many, many beaches on many continents: Mombasa, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Barbados, Mexico and the U.S. What's beautiful about beach communities is for whatever reason, they feel like vacation to me. — Hill Harper

Dominican Republic is, is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etcetera. — Pat Robertson

When I was thinking about these women characters, no matter how bad a person I am - a bad writer, my limitations, my sexism, you know - the thought was, it would be useful as a writer to try to create a template for all the male writers, especially Dominican male writers, especially males of color, of how a writer can use seeing to create more nuanced representations of women. — Junot Diaz

When Harvard University opened its doors in 1636, there were already well-established universities in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru. — Oscar Arias

Players from the Dominican Republic have a history of not playing well in cold weather ... The ball hurts their hands when they make contact. — Grady Little

The Dominican Republic is my holy land, my Mecca. — Raquel Cepeda

Playing in New York is special to me because you are surrounded by so many communities and a strong Latin community, including the Washington Heights neighborhood. I come to Washington Heights for real Dominican food that reminds me of my hometown, and it's a great place to visit. — Robinson Cano

No, women like you don't write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness, the rebelliousness. — Edwidge Danticat

Sammy Sosa? Everybody knew who Sammy was, paid attention to Sammy. I had already signed in pro ball when he had the great homer year with Mark McGwire in '98. But I followed it, and I was proud of him because he was my countryman. There are a lot of great ballplayers from the Dominican, and he's one of the best. — Alfonso Soriano

It might interest you that just as the U.S. was ramping up its involvement in Vietnam, LBJ launched an illegal invasion of the Dominican Republic (April 28, 1965). (Santo Domingo was Iraq before Iraq was Iraq.) — Junot Diaz

Similarly, though the United States is one of the world's richest economies by per capita income, it ranks only around seventeenth in reported life satisfaction. It is superseded not only by the likely candidates of Finland, Norway, and Sweden, which all rank above the United States but also by less likely candidates such as Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. Indeed, one might surmise that it is health and longevity rather than income that give the biggest boost to reported life satisfaction. Since good health and longevity can be achieved at per capita income levels well below those of the United States, so too can life satisfaction. One marketing expert put it this way, with only slight exaggeration: Basic Survival goods are cheap, whereas narcissistic self-stimulation and social-display products are expensive. Living doesn't cost much, but showing off does. — Jeffrey D. Sachs

The word came into common usage during the First American Occupation of the DR, which ran from 1916 to 1924. (You didn't know we were occupied twice in the twentieth century? Don't worry, when you have kids they won't know the U.S. occupied Iraq either.) During the First Occupation it was reported that members of the American Occupying Forces would often attend Dominican parties but instead of joining in the fun the Outlanders would simply stand at the edge of dances and watch. Which of course must have seemed like the craziest thing in the world. Who goes to a party to watch? — Junot Diaz

In the Dominican, there are a lot of kids who need help. I just do that for my mom because my mom liked to help a lot of kids in the Dominican. Whoever I am right now is because of her. She gave me the education; she always took care of me like a mommy. — Alfonso Soriano

Lola swore she would never return to that terrible country. On one of our last nights as novios she said, Ten million Trujillos is all we are. — Junot Diaz

Fans love Sosa for his exuberance, for the kisses he blows to his mother, wife and four children. He is Slammin' Sammy, a fairy-tale figure rising from poverty in the Dominican Republic to the 55th floor above Chicago's Lake Shore Drive. — Bill Dedman

I'm pretty sure that China is way bigger than the Dominican. — Matt Kemp

The Niagara on a bicycle. It's like trying to cross the Niagara on a bicycle, which is impossible, but it's an expression in the Dominican Republic that basically says that someone is going through a hard time. — Juan Luis Guerra

Schoolchildren don't normally learn this poem about Columbus's second voyage to Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic today): "In fourteen hundred and ninety-five, sixteen hundred people he kidnapped alive." Columbus — Brian D. McLaren

The world, with all its impossible variegation and the basic miracle of its existence, draws most mourners out of their grief and back into itself. The homosexual forsythia blooms; the young Irish dancers in Killarney dance, their arms as rigid as shovel handles; secret deals are done involving weapons or office space or crude oil or used cars or drugs; new lovers, believing they will never really have to get up, lie down together; the Large Hadron Collider smashes the Higgs boson into view; snow drapes its white stoles on the bare limbs of winter; the crack of the bat swung by a hefty Dominican pulls a crowd to its feet in Boston; bricks for the new hospital in Phnom Penh are laid in true courses; the single-engine Cessna lands safely in an Ohio alfalfa field during a storm. How can you resist? The true loss in only to the dying, and even the won't feel it when the dying's done. — Daniel Menaker

I'm just this Dominican kid from New Jersey. — Junot Diaz