Before you know it you'll be my age telling your own granddaughter the story of your life and you want to make it an interesting one, don't you? You want to be able to tell her some adventures, some excitements, some something. How you live your life, little one, is a gift for those who come after you, a kind of inheritance.

— Cristina García

For many years in Cuba, nobody spoke of the problem between blacks and whites. It was considered too disagreeable to discuss. But my father spoke to me clearly so that I would understand what happened to his father and his uncles during the Little War of 1912, so that I would know how our men were hunted down day and night like animals, and finally hung by their genitals from the lampposts in Guitar. The war that killed my grandfather and great-uncles and thousands of other blacks is only a footnote in our history books. Why, then, should I trust anything I read? I trust only what I see, what I know with my heart, nothing more.

— Cristina García

For me, the sea was a great comfort, Polar. But it made my children restless. It exists now so we can call and wave from opposite shores.

— Cristina García

Frustrated, El Wider went home, rested his pitching arm, and started a revolution in the mountains.

— Cristina García

I resent the hell out of the politicians and generals who force events on us that structure our lives, that dictate the memories we'll have when we're old.

— Cristina García

It seemed to him that life's true tragedy was to lift one's voice among the living and be met with indifference.

— Cristina García

Nobody is ready for death. If you ask Joe Blow on the street, he ain't going to tell you he thinks he'll live forever. But when the end is near you'll realize you've been believing that all along. It's like getting caught with your pants down. That's why you have to live, little one. Yeah, stop and smell them roses.

— Cristina García

Papi, I don't know what to do anymore." Lourdes begins to cry. "No matter what I do, Polar hates me."" Pilar doesn't hate you, HIA. She just hasn't learned to love you yet.

— Cristina García

Santeria was traditionally an unacknowledged and underappreciated aspect of what it meant to be Cuban. Yet the syncretism between the Yoruba religion that the slaves brought to the island and the Catholicism of their masters is, in my opinion, the underpinning of Cuban culture. Every artistic realm--music, theater, literature, etc.--owes a huge debt to Santeria and the slaves who practiced it and passed it on, largely secretively, for generations.

— Cristina García

There are white people who know how to act politely to blacks, but deep down you know they're uncomfortable. They're worse, more dangerous than those who speak their minds, because they don't know what they're capable of.

— Cristina García