People are a lot smarter than anyone gives them credit for being.

Everyone comes back. It makes no difference how far we wander, we always have our country, our land, in our souls and our minds.

They're making a ton of money, and no one is getting a nickel.

And, he'd seen me in Panama, and he talked about maybe doing something in New York so I hooked it up when I came here and I recorded in 1969 my first album with Pete Rodriguez.

What is interesting in this is the exchange of music that occurred between New Orleans and Cuba, I mean, they had ferries that would go from one port to another.

I was a kid, and I remember my mother singing. She was also a radio soap opera actress, but my mother sang.

Every band had their own distinctive sound, but it was pretty much dancing music and rhythmic music with a tremendous emphasis on copying the Cuban models.

So that I saw music as a way of documenting realities from the urban cities of Latin America.

So that when I came from Panama... my family was exiled in 1973 and they went to Miami.

Anywhere you had a commerce center, you had a lot of music.

So that when I came to New York again, it was, I'm not too sure right now, but it was '74 or '75. I went to Miami in '74 and then I came to New York, I think, at the end of '74.

Life is a game. We must keep playing the game. The more we play, the more we will understand the game of life.

It’s not important to be consistent, it’s important to be right.

Without truth I feel ashamed to be alive.

My favourite things are jokes, friendliness and feeling comfortable.

[The unreactivity of the noble gas elements] belongs to the surest of experimental results.

To steale the Hog, and give the feet for almes. [To steal the hog, and give the feet to alms.]

You absorb so much from whatever your environment is, as an artist, and you learn to take from it what can help you create.

For disorder obstructs: besides, it doth disgust life, distract the appetities, and yield no true relish to the senses.

Language is inexorably tied to power and understanding. And power and understanding are the roots of magic. Just the act of writing something down is a magical act.

It is when you experience another's suffering as your own that your human values is manifested.