I wanted to leave high school in 1958 and join the Cuban revolution. So the only reason I did not come to join [Fidel] Castro was because my mother would not let me. I was only 16.

The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.

We felt that the police needed a label, a label other than that fear image that they carried in the community. So we used the pig as the rather low-lifed animal in order to identify the police. And it worked.

The neighbors were more than neighbors [on Cuba]. They were like part of the family.

The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.

By surrendering my life to the revolution, I found eternal life

I worked in the mechanical factories repairing cement trucks. The Cuban government wanted me to work in the university as a teacher in literature, but I declined because I wanted a more sense of the countryside.