“He reacts to many things bitterly, this pleasant, smiling young man, who is 32 years old, married now, with two sons, a sports hero here and back home in Puerto Rico. Clemente reacts to things bitterly because he is an honest man, and a feeling one. Baseball has become a game of automatons performing in mechanical ways. Scoreboards now tell you when to cheer. The words "Go-go-go" light up, and you obediently recite, "Go-go-go." A bugle sounds, and reflexively you murmur, "Charge!" Roberto Clemente is a throwback, as are many of his Latin cohorts—which means he has his flaws. Anger can twist him almost helpless with rage. But it has also made him not only a leader of men—automatons are poor leaders—but also a spokesman for his people. He spoke out, during 1966, in an Associated Press dispatch of August 23…”

“The thing about a hero, is even when it doesn't look like there's a light at the end of the tunnel, he's going to keep digging, he's going to keep trying to do right and make up for what's gone before, just because that's who he is.”

“Son,” he said, “you’re going to work in this life, and you’re going to play. And when the last days come, you’ll look back and find that that’s all there was, and endless stream of days going back to today. But if you can find the thing you should be doing, the thing that makes you you, and if you can make that thing yours, then you’ve beaten the game. I haven’t. Most men don’t. You probably won’t, either, but the point is to try, and to never give up, even when you think it’s over.”

“But for those folks who have lost their job right now because a plant went down the Mexico, that isn't going to make you feel better. And so what we have to do is to make sure that folks are trained for the jobs that are coming in now because some of those jobs of the past are just not going to come back, and when somebody says, like the person you just mentioned who I'm not going to advertise for, that he's going to bring all these jobs back, well how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do? There's — there's no answer to it. He just says, "Well, I'm going to negotiate a better deal." Well, how — what — how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually, the answer is he doesn't have an answer.”

“I tell young people who ask me about their careers, "Wake up on Saturday and ask yourself, Which job would I go to right now? Then choose that one." Because what it tells you is that you're going to your passion; your passion is your work. And I feel that way about my work.”

“You are going to survive. And good things are going to start to happen again. And one day you are going to look back and this will not even be such a bad thing”

“I've been on my own for a number of years now, but I've also found myself very alone. My family looks at me differently now, and that's the hardest thing to deal with, because you want to go home and be the person that you used to be. Obviously, I'm 28 years old and I can't go home and just be my mum's little baby.”

“Roger: It’s totally cool you know. We go out there and put our best foot forward and we play songs we’ve played before, and that feels like we know what’s going to happen. The crowd is going to react to it or they’re not going to react to it. If we went out there and played all new songs it would be lame.”

“One of my biggest heroes in music has been David Bowie. He's said, `I'm going to be a painter now, or I'm going to do some films,' and his audience is very forgiving, because they understand him as an artist. Whether you agree or like the result, you respect that he's expressing his artistic feelings.”

“I'm dealing with a lot of scary things. I think you have to react to them. And you either laugh at them or you go insane.”