There is nothing like the whites of someone’s eyes to convince you how very true what you believe is, how very much you must act on it.

It seems disrespectful to my parents who left... to hear their story over and over again which always ends with... 'and I'll never go back as long as anyone in the Castro family is in power.' Well, what happens if you can go back? Would you want to see things?

I remember being so homesick and realizing that where I came from was not something that existed in the cultural imagination outside the city. People used to think Miami was just partying in South Beach all the time.

I don't know why I had to fall in love with someone who's more stubborn than I am.

I promise I shall never give up, and that I'll die yelling and laughing, and that until then I'll rush around this world I insist is holy and pull at everyone's lapel and make them confess to me and to all.

Disorder is inherent in stability. Civilized man doesn't understand stability. He's confused it with rigidity. Our political and economic and social leaders drool about stability constantly. It's their favorite word, next to 'power.'

'Gotta stabilize the political situation in Southeast Asia, gotta stabilize oil production and consumption, gotta stabilize student opposition to the government' and so forth.

Stabilization to them means order, uniformity, control. And that's a half-witted and potentially genocidal misconception. No matter how thoroughly they control a system, disorder invariably leaks into it. Then the managers panic, rush to plug the leak and endeavor to tighten the controls. Therefore, totalitarianism grows in viciousness and scope. And the blind pity is, rigidity isn't the same as stability at all.

True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed.