I'm still strong and in the best shape to continue living my life.

The roots of Cuban music are in my head.

Ry Cooder for me is a master, a great master that has a wonderful feel for Cuban music. He's also paid tribute my talent a bit, even though I don't know half of what he knows.

My secret? A desire to work, years of dedication and loving what you do; I can't live without music.

Can you imagine that Cuba and Europe's youth, who had forgotten about traditional music, who only thought of rock music, are now looking back towards their grandparents? That is a phenomenon.

Towns are suffering from all these things, we should unite until we are all satisfied, man cannot be killing each other as if we were animals, as if we had no culture; that is a lack of culture.

As far as pleasures, you've got to have limits. You shouldn't have too much of good things, so you'll always have a desire for more and you won't get bored.

When it comes to musicians, I'm like the daddy of musicians here in Cuba.

I've done a lot of things away from my homeland.

Cubans are frantic when it comes to appreciating music.

I'll only stop singing when I'm in my grave.

The greater a man’s folly, the greater his enslavement. The wiser a man is, the greater his freedom.

Criminals should be punished, not fed pastries.

There are people who not only strive to remain static themselves but strive to keep everything else so ... their position is almost laughably hopeless.

And life is beautiful, love is beautiful, nature and music are beautiful. Everything we experience is a gift, a present we should cherish and pass on to those we love.

a masterpiece doesn't so much transcend its time as perpetuate it; it keeps its moment alive.

I find I don't need to be polished. I feel that you have to keep it real, and that's the best way to go.

Time doesn’t, as advertised, heal all wounds. Although the wrenching immediacy of grief eventually passed, the settled sorrow that replaced it might in its own way be even more intense.

In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles and Orion flashed his cold fires.

Creative fantasy, because it is mainly trying to do something else ... may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like cage-birds.

Incarceration has become a business. It is in the interest of the police and the prisons to keep locking people up.