“This country is heaven, in the spiritual sense of the word. And I say, we prefer to die in heaven than survive in hell.”

There is nothing more agreeable than having a place where one can throw on the floor as many cigar butts as one pleases without the subconscious fear of a maid who is waiting like a sentinel to place an ashtray where the ashes are going to fall.

I am someone who’s been in politics for 43 years and I know what I’m doing and what I should do. Have no doubt that I know how to tell the truth and to do so elegantly.

I propose the immediate launching of a nuclear strike on the United States. The Cuban people are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the cause of the destruction of imperialism and the victory of world revolution.

The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is – and I mean this seriously – the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.

My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn’t work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious.

I would not vote for the mayor. It’s not just because he didn’t invite me to dinner, but because on my way into town from the airport there were such enormous potholes.

How can we help President Obama?

U.S. leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe.

Good athletes do not know what tiredness is. They do not know what discouragement is. Good athletes only know what victory is.

Condemn me, it does not matter: history will absolve me.

Ideas do not need weapons, to the extent that they can convince the great masses.

I find capitalism repugnant. It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition.

I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews.

I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims. They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything. No one blames the Muslims for anything.

I am not a communist and neither is the revolutionary movement.

The societies of consumption and squandering of material resources are incompatible with the idea of economic growth and a clean planet.

Money, financial matters were to help people, to help them survive, not to have a bigger house or a bigger car and that sort of thing, because I hear that from so many kids, they often don’t know why their father won’t spend more time with them.

You know, you don’t get to survive that long without making some compromises.

As time goes by, as time goes by, the whip-crack of the years, the precipice of illusions, the ravine that swallows up all human endeavour except the struggle to survive.

The creative adult is the child who has survived.

I thought anything might happen if I wasn’t vigilant. I didn’t eat. I didn’t go out. I didn’t want to see anyone. But I survived, Paul.

Don’t dress to kill, dress to survive.

The storms that I bore – manifested the mode of surviving the wild and unspeakable.

I’ve had a lot of movies that didn’t get great numbers on test screening, but a lot of times the film was able to survive, or the studio still stayed and supported it.