Quotes & Sayings About Havana

in December 2009, the Castros created new problems by arresting a USAID contractor named Alan Gross for bringing computer equipment to the small, aging Jewish community in Havana. Cuban authorities subjected him to a rump trial and then sentenced him to fifteen years in prison. One of my regrets as Secretary was our failure to bring Alan home. — Hillary Rodham Clinton

Havana was a woman who had once been renowned for her beauty until hard times had soured her. Her hand had gotten heavy with makeup application: her necklines had crept down; her beauty was tainted with vulgarity. But sometimes when she was alone, after she'd taken off her makeup, she danced in her garden, bare-faced and barefoot, to an old bolero, and the old elegance appeared, normal as a Tuesday evening. — Julia Cooke

I picked a name that was a combination of an island name and a very English name. Havana was one choice and Dominico was another, but I liked the combination of Jamaica Kincaid. — Jamaica Kincaid

I have already transmitted to Congress the report of the naval court of inquiry on the destruction of the battleship Maine in the harbor of Havana during the night of the fifteenth of February. The destruction of that noble vessel has filled the national heart with inexpressible horror. Two hundred and fifty-eight brave sailors and marines and two officers of our Navy, reposing in the fancied security of a friendly harbor, have been hurled to death, grief and want brought to their homes and sorrow to the nation. — William McKinley

I've started dreaming in Spanish, which has never happened before. I wake up feeling different, like something inside me is changing, something chemical and irreversible. There's a magic here working its way through my veins. There's something about the vegetation, too, that I respond to instinctively - the stunning bougainvillea, the flamboyants and jacarandas, the orchids growing from the trunks of the mysterious ceiba trees. And I love Havana, its noise and decay and painted ladyness. I could happily sit on one of those wrought-iron balconies for days, or keep my grandmother company on her porch, with its ringside view of the sea. I'm afraid to lose all this, to lose Abuela Celia again. But sooner or later I'd have to return to New York. I know now it's where I belong - not instead of here, but more than here. How can I tell my grandmother this? — Cristina Garcia

The new home fashion will be spare. This will be the return of an old WASP style: the good, frayed carpet; dogs that look like dogs and not a hairdo in a teacup, as miniature dogs back from the canine boutique do now.
A friend, noting what has and will continue to happen with car sales, said America will look like Havana - old cars and faded grandeur. It won't. It will look like 1970, only without the bell-bottoms and excessive hirsuteness. More families will have to live together. More people will drink more regularly. Secret smoking will make a comeback as part of a return to simple pleasures. People will slow down. Mainstream religion will come back. Walker Percy again: Bland affluence breeds fundamentalism. Bland affluence is over. — Peggy Noonan

He was large enough and round enough to join the solar system with no questions asked. The cigar that protruded from the right side of his mouth would have been a full day's work for the best torcedor in Havana, and if he was worried about the stadium being a smoke-free location, he gave no sign of it. Gave no sign, in fact, of ever being worried about much of anything. — Stephen Spencer

She put up her posters, which mainly consisted of one five-foot-wide panorama of Diego Luna doing a split on the set of Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights-which Penelope had decided would be an excellent conversation topic, because that is a movie everyone likes. — Rebecca Harrington

I feel like Havana has always been such an amazing, cosmopolitan city that it makes sense that a lot of galleries will want to be present. — Rachael Price

Cuba is such a beautiful country, and everywhere you go, there's music and people dancing - especially in Havana. — Julia Sawalha

One October day in 1976, a Cuban airliner exploded over the Caribbean and crashed, killing all 73 people aboard. There should have been 74. I had a ticket on that flight, but changed my reservation at the last moment and flew to Havana on an earlier plane. — Stephen Kinzer

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

Then [after Castro dies and her triumphal return to Havana], at last, I could sing for my people. — Gloria Estefan

My grandmother would shanghai pilots at the Havana airport so they'd bring me cartons of mango baby food
the only kind I'd eat. I learned to eat peach later. And in every carton, she'd slip in a Cuban record. — Gloria Estefan

The scent of Havana tobacco draped thick from the magnolia trees in the front yard. Ice cubes mingled and clinked against the sides of crystal tumblers. Patrick said hello to a group of men sitting on the veranda. I heard the pop of a champagne cork and laughter from inside. — Ruta Sepetys

Cuban eyes often look close to tears. Tears never seem far away because both their pain and their joy are always so close to the surface. — Brin-Jonathan Butler

Che abandoned his first wife, Hilda, a Peruvian woman of Indian extraction, for a taller, blonder trophy wife (also named Aleida). Their 1959 wedding in Havana was the social event of the year and featured Raul Castro as "best man." After he married Aleida, Che would continue to "upgrade" his women, taking the worldly Tamara "Tania" Bunke, born of German parents in Argentina, as his mistress. — Humberto Fontova

The Congressman ascertained that the consulate in Havana had numbers to feed the pigs. — Erich Leinsdorf

I spent a great deal of time with Che Guevara while I was in Havana. I believe he was far less a mercenary than he was a freedom fighter. — Maureen O'Hara

While guidebooks might tell you that time collapsed here, another theory says that in Latin America, all of history coexists at once. — Brin-Jonathan Butler

I was born in Havana, Cuba and raised in Madrid, Spain. Then I moved to New Jersey. — Daisy Fuentes

Michael still thought of Havana as home, because he was born there. And he had been Miguel Arroya there.
Here, he was Michael. — Mike Lupica

To what extent did Castro at this point conceal secret communist purposes? He later said that he hid radical views in order to hold the anti-Batista coalition together, and this was probably true. But, though a radical, there is no conclusive evidence that he was then a Communist or even a Marxist-Leninist. Whatever he later became, he began as a romantic, left-wing nationalist - in his own phrase, a "utopian Socialist." He had tried to read Das Kapital at the University of Havana but, according to his own account, bogged down on page 370. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Four Months of War in Cuba
The Spanish-American War lasted less than four months for the United States; however for Cuba this was only a small part of their War of Independence from Spain, which went through many phases starting with the Ten Years' War and lasted almost 20 years. The United States government originally was neutral, but became involved when the Spanish Governor forced thousands of Cubans into concentration camps. Americans joined the Cubans in their fight against the Spaniards after the USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana harbor. During those tumultuous years, 5,180 Cuban insurgents died in battle and over 40,000 died from various diseases such as Yellow Fever. Colon Cemetery in Havana is one of the great historical cemeteries of the world and was built just in time to receive the victims of the Cuban Wars of Independence. — Hank Bracker

There was a lot of stuff happening in Havana that was being heard and appreciated by New Orleans musicians because of this situation. And vice versa. — Ruben Blades

University of Havana
Student protests, which actually led to the closure of the university, helped to shape Autonomy for Cuba's university system. After the school reopened in 1959 the government's policy was to not interfere with school affairs. On November 27, 2007, five thousand people signed a petition insisting on autonomy from the state as well as freedom of expression for the island nations' universities and thus, this autonomy was even granted by the present Communist government. The concept of "University Students without Borders" was endorsed by both the students and faculty members, representing universities in the provinces throughout Cuba. The State of New York University (SUNY) in Albany, now offers their students the opportunity to pursue courses in Cuban history, culture and politics. Most of these courses, as well as intensive Spanish language classes, are taught to foreign students in Cuba. — Hank Bracker

In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, one when he was a boy and one when he was a man — Mark Twain

My love is like a powder keg
My love is like a powder keg in the corner of an empty warehouse
Somewhere just outside of town
About to burn down
My love is like a Cuban plane
My love is like a Cuban plane flying from Havana
Up the Florida coast to the 'Glades
Soviet made
Our love is like the border between Greece and Albania
Our love is like the border between Greece and Albania
Trucks loaded down with weapons
Crossing over every night
Moon yellow and bright
There is a shortage in the blood supply
But there is no shortage of blood
The way I feel about you baby can't explain it
You got the best of my love — John Darnielle

It seemed [there are] musical nodes on the planet where cultures meet and mix, sometimes as a result of unfortunate circumstances, like slavery or something else, in places like New Orleans and Havana and Brazil. And those are places where the European culture and indigenous culture and African culture all met and lived together, and some new kind of culture and especially music came out of that. — David Byrne

If the birth of a genius resembles that of an idiot, the end of a Havana Corona resembles that of a 5-cent cigar. — Sacha Guitry

The expulsion of Spain from Cuba (a worthwhile venture) so that the U.S. could take control of Cuba (an unworthy venture) was preceded by a dubious story, never proven, that the Spaniards had exploded the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana harbor. Our seizure of the Philippines (from the Filipinos) was preceded by a manufactured "incident" between Filipino and U.S. troops. The German sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania in World War I was one of the instances of "ruthless" submarine warfare given as a reason to enter that war; years afterward, it was disclosed that the Lusitania was not an innocent vessel but a munitions ship whose papers had been doctored. — Howard Zinn

He checked his parachute and launched himself into the Sea of Sarcasm.
Havana Red — Leonardo Padura

A good Havana is one of the best pleasures that I know. — W. Somerset Maugham

I think that I've tried many times to get Cuba in my writings, especially Havana, which was once a great and fascinating city. — Guillermo Cabrera Infante

American Casualties on the USS Maine

Two hundred & Sixty Six American sailors were killed when the American battleship, USS Maine, exploded and sank in Havana harbor after a massive explosion of undetermined origin. The first Board of Inquiry regarding the incident stated that a mine placed on or near the hull had sunk the ship. Later studies determined that it was more likely heat from smoldering coal in the ship's bunker that set off the explosion in an adjoining ammunition locker.

In February 1898, the recovered bodies of the American sailors who died on the battleship were interred in the Colon Cemetery, in Havana. Nearly two years later they were exhumed and now 163 of the crew that were killed in 1898 are buried at Arlington National Cemetery, near the USS Maine Memorial.

The beautiful monument shown is located in Central Park West in New York City. — Hank Bracker

Today more people lose their seats in the Politburo in Havana than in the Congress of America, ... We need to have competitive races for the Legislature ... We have to have a clash of ideas. — John McCain

Her other paramour was a student at the UASD
one of those City College types who's been in school eleven years and is always five credits shy of a degree. Students today don't mean na; but in Latin America whipped into a frenzy by the fall of Arbenz, by the stoning of Nixon, by the Guerillas of the Sierra Madre, by the endless cynical maneuverings of the Yankee Pig Dogs
in a Latin America already a year and a half into the Decade of Guerilla
a student was something else altogether, an agent for change, a quantum string in the staid Newtonian universe. Such a student was Arquimedes. He also listened to the shortwave, but not for Dodgers scores; what he risked his life for was the news leaking out of Havana, news of the future. Arquemides was, therefore, a student, the son of a Zapatero and a midwife, a tirapiedra and a quemagoma for life. Being a student wasn't a joke, not with Trujillo and Johnny Abbes scooping up everybody following the foiled Cuban Invasion of 1959. — Junot Diaz

I love going to the factories of La Plata, or Little Havana and seeing them roll cigars. I get excited. To me it is more beautiful than a topless club — Al Goldstein

If I were your mother, I would also warn you to beware of buildings that claim to be the houses of God. If heard it said once, jokingly, that on their days off, when they are not actively intervening in human affairs or shoring up the sweetness of the earth, the orishas get together in a little apartment in a poor section of Havana around a very big screen television and laugh themselves silly a the unceasing soap opera that is our lives, all the while puffing on good Cuban cigars and swigging cheap rum. And, darling, whether you imagine one big white distant god or many more particular brown ones who like their little pleasures, I would tell you to get off your butt and out of the house if you want to make contact. If you go to a mausoleum, you'll find dead bodies. Living gods inhabit a living world. — Joyce Thompson

The most futile and disastrous day seems well spent when it is reviewed through the blue, fragrant smoke of a Havana Cigar. — Evelyn Waugh

If there is a reason to believe in God, it would be the Havana Leaf. — Norman Lear

Many of us can't go home again, whether home is Seville, Cabo Sur, Nastas, Havana, or Kansas City. Thus, we must recognize that home really lies in the eternal peace, dormant or conscious, that dwells in each human heart ... Quote from "Ms. Quixote Goes Country", a truthful novel. — LEVega

He drank no hard liquor but loved wine, taking perhaps three glasses a day.42 He did not smoke. When he received gifts of Havana cigars from well-wishers, he passed them along to friends.43 — Jon Meacham

Graham Greene's work must be included in any survey of top-rank spy novels, and 'Our Man in Havana' may be his best. — Alan Furst

In 1628, French pirates and marauding, escaped slaves plundered Santiago and burned Havana to the ground. Even the Dutch, led by Piet Heyn , sacked the Spanish fleet lying at anchor in Havana harbor. page 83, "The Exciting Story of Cuba — Hank Bracker

Smoking too much makes me nervous. Must lasso my natural tendency to acquire such habits. Holding heavy cigar constantly in my mouth has deformed my upper lip, it has a sort of Havana curl. — Thomas A. Edison

A cigar makers organization once said that I was the most famous cigar smoker in the world. I dont know if thats true, but once while visiting Havana, I went to a cigar factory. There were four hundred people there rolling cigars, and when they saw me, they all stood up and applauded. — Groucho Marx

I realized that I had traveled to Havana during what now seems like the childhood of the Cuban Revolution, if you think that Fidel has now been in power for 44 extremely long years. I started looking at the revolution as history, and not as part of the daily news. — Alma Guillermoprieto

So I do not consider myself a chronicler of my fatherland or even a chronicler of Havana. — Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Havana is like Beirut, without having gone through the civil war to achieve the destruction. — Theodore Dalrymple

On February 8, 1928, known as Lindbergh day since it was the day he crossed the Atlantic Ocean the year before, Charles A. Lindbergh landed at the Campo Columbia airfield near Havana. Lindbergh had visited many countries in his plane, and he had the national flags of each country painted in the fuselage. Having flown from Haiti, on a Goodwill Tour of the Caribbean in his "Spirit of St. Louis," he had the Cuban flag painted on his a single-engine Ryan monoplane. It was the last country he visited before he donated the "Spirit of St. Louis" to the Smithsonian Institution, where it is still exhibited at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. — Hank Bracker

You think too much," she said.
"OK, no more thinking. — Caliente

What I will always remember about Havana is the light...All I can see is the blinding light of Havana. It's burned into my retina. It still hurts my eyes. — Uva De Aragon

If it was difficult for a visitor to find anything to eat impromptu in Moscow, Havana, Tirana, Bucharest, or Pyongyang, it took little effort to understand the connection of this difficulty with the vulgar anti-commercialism of Saint Karl and Saint Vladimir. Indeed, it would have taken all the ingenuity of the cleverest academics not to have understood it. — Theodore Dalrymple

I'm always astonished when readers suggest that I must write my novels while high on pot or (God forbid!) LSD. Apparently, there are people who confuse the powers of imagination with the effects of intoxication. Not one word of my oeuvre, not one, has been written while in an artificially altered state. Unlike many authors, I don't even drink coffee when I write. No coffee, no cola, no cigarettes. There was a time when I smoked big Havana cigars while writing, not for the nicotine (I didn't inhale) but as an anchor, something to hold on to, I told myself, to keep from falling over the edge of the earth. Eventually, I began to wonder what it would be like to take that fall. So one day I threw out the cigars and just let go. Falling, I must say, has been exhilarating
though I may change my mind when I hit bottom. — Tom Robbins

You probably heard about the big prisoner swap with Cuba. A man who has been incarcerated in Havana for five years is back home in the United States. And we sent them some prisoners. The deal still has to be approved by President Obama and Bud Selig. — David Letterman

I am in a two-stoplight town in the Alabama hill country, in the heart of the Bible Belt and Crimson Tide football mania, listening to an old-fashioned, heated argument between Cubans like the ones I've heard in Little Havana in Miami, but the moment very quickly loses its sense of strangeness and cultural dissonance. This is what America is like now
North America, I mean, the United States. The craziness of cubanos and mexicanos and guatemaltecos can find you just about anywhere — Hector Tobar

And so, whether they came here on the Mayflower, on a slave ship, or on an airplane from Havana, we are all descendants of the men and women who built here the nation that saved the world. — Marco Rubio

On the August night in 1933 when General Gerardo Machado, then president of Cuba, flew out of Havana into exile, he took with him five revolvers, seven bags of gold, and five friends, still in their pajamas. — Joan Didion

One of my favorite places I've visited is Havana, Cuba. On my way home from Costa Rica, I did a week in Havana. The colors, the music, the beautiful men and the cars! I love vintage and antique cars and own a couple myself. — Megalyn Echikunwoke

The crisis isn't over. The prospect of nuclear war has never been greater. The United States is so close to invading Cuba that one bad joke in the nonstop series of ExComm meetings is that Bobby Kennedy will soon be mayor of Havana. — Bill O'Reilly

My father was born and raised in Havana, Cuba. His family is from Spain. My father never taught me how to speak Spanish when I was little. That's very disappointing to me. I'm still planning on learning it on my own. I really want to travel to Spain and immerse myself in the culture and learn it on my own. — Kether Donohue

Man can never be more perfect than the sun. The sun burns us with the same light that warms us. The sun has spots (stains). The ungrateful only talk about the spots (stains). The grateful talk about the light. — Jose Marti

I eat a catfish sandwich
with onions and red sauce
20c. (Havana 1953) — Allen Ginsberg

With forbidden, seething Havana waiting to open up nearby, South Beach is a riot of loose luxe and easy sleazy, where dancing the night away amid hundreds of tanned, undulating bodies is a standard prelude to hot, anonymous sex. — Maureen Orth

Partying on the Malecon

One of the most exciting areas in Havana is the Malecon, a protective sea wall which buffers the northern edge of the Vedado neighborhood of Havana, from the Straits of Florida. Busiest during weekends, it is the most popular place to stroll and is an unrivaled meeting spot for guys and dolls. For this activity the primary party area is the corner of the Malecon and La Rampa, and for a country as poor as Cuba the Malecon offers a reasonable form of entertainment and people watching. Although there are nightclubs in Havana, spending an evening along the Malecon, is probably the best way to enjoy the pulse of Havana and offers visitors a chance to interact with friendly locals. — Hank Bracker

It didn't get any more glamorous than Havana, Cuba, in the 1950s. I used to go there when I was a waiter on a cruise ship. — Sirio Maccioni

Currents of cigarette fumes wafted through what passed for air. Attractive young women in bright-hued gowns glided through the streams of smoke, like tropical fish in an aquarium. Detecting the white uniforms and leathery faces, they promptly approached the Navy men. Very pretty, Ed thought, but hungry, a school of piranha. Just what the doctor ordered: fun and games with no complications. Right: no complications. pg. 27. — Clark Zlotchew

The work directed against mosquitoes carrying yellow fever had an equally good effect upon malaria, especially when anti-anopheles work was extended to the suburbs of the city. Before the year 1901 Havana had yearly from 300 to 500 deaths from malaria, rising as high in 1898 as 1,900 deaths. Since 1901 there has been a steady decrease in the malaria death rate until 1912, when there were only four deaths. Four deaths from malaria in a city in the tropics the size of Havana, about 300,000 population, means the extinction of malaria in that city. — William Crawford Gorgas

Zoological Parks South of Florida
"Cuba has several zoos, the largest of which are in Havana and Santiago de Cuba. The Havana National Zoo is dedicated to going beyond the mere display of animals and attempts to maintain a more natural habitat, supporting and promoting breeding programs for various species with follow-up scientific research programs." — Hank Bracker

January 8, 1959; Castro enters Havana
On January 8, 1959, Fidel made his grand entrance into Havana. With his son Fidelito at his side, he rode on top of a Sherman tank to Camp Columbia, where he gave the first of his long, rambling, difficult-to-endure speeches. It was broadcast on radio and television for the entire world to witness. For the Cubans it was what they had waited for! During the speech, smiling Castro asked Camilo Cienfuegos, "How am I doing?" and the catch phrase "Voy bien, Camilo" was born. — Hank Bracker

I went to Mexico for three months after college and studied Spanish there. And I went to Cuba and studied at the University of Havana. I loved studying in other countries. — Andrea Navedo

There aren't that many galleries in Havana. There are a few state galleries and an ever-increasing but still limited number of independent galleries; there's no comparison with the number in New York. — Rachael Price

Fidel Castro becomes a Sex Symbol
"After entering Havana on January 8, 1959 as the conquering hero, women threw themselves at the normally quiet Fidel Castro. Much to his own surprise, he became a sex symbol and was tempted by the many bikini-clad young ladies at the as the conquering hero, women threw themselves at the normally quiet Fidel. Much to his own surprise, he became a sex symbol and was tempted by the many bikini-clad young ladies at the hotel pool of the Hotel Nacional de Cuba. Errol Flynn, the famous movie star and ladies' man of that era, met Castro and had a number of Hollywood beauties with him, expecting to make a movie in Havana. For the most part Fidel was preoccupied with the affairs of government, but he always made time for the chosen few. — Hank Bracker