Quotes from Uva de Aragón

What I will always remember about Havana is the light...All I can see is the blinding light of Havana. It's burned into my retina. It still hurts my eyes.

About The Memory of Silence: If it contributes to a better understanding of the contemporary history of Cuba and its diaspora, as well as the sufferings of all the peoples separated by ideologies or displaced by wars and other conflicts, all my efforts in writing it will be more than compensated.

That's why I always say being a Cuban is an incurable disease that you get in your blood, and sometimes it's even contagious.

I don't have any fears whatsoever. I am fulfilling my duty to my country.

They all looked like families coming back from Church, wearing their Sunday best. In reality, they were refugees who had no idea how drastically their lives were about to change.

the exiles who at midday relax at the café with their suitcases packed full of memories, packed and ready to return to paradise, even though they - or is it we? - aren't sure if that particular paradise is a memory or a dream (175).

Cuba is painful for me, too. It hurts to always feel like a foreigner, with your roots exposed, with this feeling that everything is temporary, that life is back there in a future that never seems to get here. What has happened to us is very hard, but there are so many who have it so much worse.