Quotes About Havana

It is a straight shot from Cancun to Havana, sixty-six minutes by jet plane across the Gulf of Mexico with a Soviet-blonde stewardess serving free rum and synthetic ham and cheese sandwiches.

On my first trip to Havana, I was stopped by a woman who turned out to be a Canadian tour guide and who had mistaken me for a woman who had been part of one of her tour groups.

The three grand old men of Cuban literature are Alejo Carpentier (his masterpiece is The Lost Steps); José Lezama Lima (whose autobiographical novel Paradiso infuriated Castro); and Guillermo Cabrera Infante (the setting of his novel Three Trapped Tigers—pre-Castro Havana—reminded me of Oscar Hijuelos's A Simple Habana Melody From When the World Was Good).

We've been trying to open the gates of communication between Havana and Miami through art, which is apolitical most of the time: It doesn't have anything to do with politics and is only an exchange of ideas.

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.

If it was difficult for a visitor to find anything to eat impromptu in Moscow, Havana, Tirana, Bucharest, or Pyongyang, it took little effort to understand the connection of this difficulty with the vulgar anti-commercialism of Saint Karl and Saint Vladimir. Indeed, it would have taken all the ingenuity of the cleverest academics not to have understood it.

Russell Bufalino had secret interests in Las Vegas casinos and not-so secret connections to the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, whom Fidel Castro toppled in 1959. With Batista's blessings Bufalino had owned a racetrack and a major casino near Havana. Bufalino lost a great deal of money and property, including the racetrack and the casino, when Castro booted the mob off the island. Time

The "sporting goods" shipments—kegs of high explosives, drums of gunpowder, cannon powder, smokeless powder, belts of machine-gun ammunition, cartridges, bullets, and shells—continued. In one month, August 1934, the Morro Castle transported over one hundred crates of assorted weapons to Havana. This arsenal was always unloaded at night by soldiers of the Cuban Army; often a convoy of trucks was needed to carry away the crates.

Both for Havana's beauty and decay, it's very hard to restrain yourself from staring everywhere you look.

Hundreds of years ago, the most beautiful women of Havana were only glimpsed stepping in or out of carriages on this street. The first foreign writers who arrived and saw this could never get past just how incredibly beautiful their feet were.

The U.S. Embassy in Havana may be reopened, but outside its gates, an open society with more freedom for its people is still absent.

We're in a global war, facing an enemy alliance that runs from Pyongyang, North Korea, to Havana, Cuba, and Caracas, Venezuela.

Iberville, the Father of Louisiana, died of yellow fever in 1706 in Havana, leaving Bienville the acting governor of Louisiana.

The government in Havana is best understood as a cross between violent left-wing radicals and organized crime.

I spent a great deal of time with Che Guevara while I was in Havana. I believe he was far less a mercenary than he was a freedom fighter.

With forbidden, seething Havana waiting to open up nearby, South Beach is a riot of loose luxe and easy sleazy, where dancing the night away amid hundreds of tanned, undulating bodies is a standard prelude to hot, anonymous sex.