If you’re deaf, dumb, and blind to what’s happening in the world, you’re under no obligation to do anything. But if you know what’s happening and you don’t do anything but sit on your ass, then you’re nothing but a punk.
My life wasn’t beautiful and creative before I became politically active. My life was totally changed when I began to struggle.
To become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.
Freedom! you askin me about freedom. I’ll be honest with you. I know a whole more about what freedom isn’t than about what it is, ’cause I’ve never been free. I can only share my vision with you of the future, about what freedom is.
I found that people had all kinds of levels of consciousness, all kinds of levels of education, but that Cubans in general were very educated politically. I could go sit in a bus and get into a conversation with someone and that person had a wealth of knowledge. And energy!
I think that in order to struggle you have to be creative. In my life, creativity has been something that has sustained me; it awoke my spiritual struggle.
The first part of planning is to believe that you can put that plan into practise.
Dreams and reality are opposites. Action synthesizes them.
I think that spirituality is important for all people to develop. I don’t mean there necessarily has to be a religious aspect to spirituality. Some people are spiritual in a religious way, other people are spiritual in their work and in their art and in their treatment of other people.
Part of being a revolutionary is creating a vision that is more humane. That is more fun, too. That is more loving. It’s really working to create something beautiful.
For me personally Cuba has been a healing state. When I first got here I had no sense that I had to heal or anything. When you’re struggling for your life and you’re in the midst of things, you don’t feel all the blows.
My experience in the United States was living in a society that was very much at war with itself, that was very alienated. People felt not part of a community, but like isolated units that were afraid of interaction, of contact, that were lonely.
When you go through all your life processing and abusing your hair so it will look like the hair of another race of people then you are making a statement and the statement is clear.
People are tried and convicted in the newspapers and on television before they ever see a courtroom.
I’ve always been a student of different ways of looking at the world, different religions. That’s been part of my survival mechanism, and also part of my curiosity as a person.
What most impressed me about Cuba was the optimism.
And if I know anything at all, it’s that a wall is just a wall and nothing more at all. It can be broken down.
I really prefer to be kind of anonymous. Because when people know your whole history, they have a tendency to relate to you differently and maybe put you up on a pedestal. I want people to just be normal with me. I just want to live my life.
I’ve tried as much as possible to avoid the standard nine-to-five thing. I’ve tried to organize my life so that I can move around, change the rhythm and the tempo.
A revolutionary woman can’t have no reactionary man.