A lot of contemporary American culture makes its way to this county. Cuba is not some gray, isolated backwater. This is a happening place.

Before going back to college, i knew i didn't want to be an intellectual, spending my life in books and libraries without knowing what the hell is going on in the streets. Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together.

White people's fear of Black people with guns will never cease to amaze me. Probably it's because they think about what they would do were they in our place. Especially the police, who have done so much dirt to Black people - their guilty conscience tells them to be afraid. When Black people seriously organize and take up arms to fight for our liberation, there will be a lot of white people who will drop dead from no other reason than their own guilt and fear.

My fantasy of Cuba was that everybody was going to be going around looking like Fidel, with green uniforms - and it was very different from my vision of how Cuba was going to be.

It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.

The methods of peaceful protests are not capable of being effective, because in reality most people pay little attention to things that are not abrasive.

Being in Cuba has allowed me to live in a society that is not at war with itself. There is a sense of community. It's a given in Cuba that, if you fall down, the person next to you is going to help you get up.