“You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.”

“It just goes to show you: you can put nine insane miles between you and another person. You can make a vow to never speak his name. You can surgically remove someone from your life. And still, he'll haunt you.”

“I wish someone would just start Fly At Your Own Risk Airlines. How 'bout that? You can have your hair gel, you can have your lighter, you can have a gun, how bout that? You can show up at the gate five minutes before the plane leaves, and pay in cash, like in the good ol' 1980s.”

“You have to wait for your mind to catch up with whatever it is it’s working on; then you can write a novel.”

“You cannot stop the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can stop them nesting in your hair.”

“You can't keep the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair.”

“You cannot keep birds from flying over your head
but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair”

“The US quota system meant stagnation for our sugar production […] the preferential treatment given to Cuban sugar by the quota also meant that no other export crops could compete with it on an economic basis. Consequently, the only two activities of our agriculture were cultivation of sugar cane and the breeding of low-quality cattle on pastures which at the same time served as reserve areas for the sugar plantation owners.”

“I don't care if you got knocked up. I can still rip your throat out”

“You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.”