A lot of groups spend their whole cultural and aesthetic identity trying to move away from Africa, which I think is a mistake. One of the reasons I love Cuba and cultures like that is because they're not trying to move away from their African roots, they're trying to embrace them. That's part of the culture.

Arturo O'Farrill

There's some new evidence that has just come out about the CIA planning terrorist attacks on U.S. soil in the '60s and how they were going to set up Castro for it in order to get America behind a war in Cuba.

Aaron McGruder

A church is an incubator, a nursery, a grade school. You start where people are and move them to where they need to be.

Adrian Rogers

I've been painting and drawing fish since I was very young. My mom found old pictures I did when I was around 6 or 7 of all these sharks and scuba diver looking back, a big ship, throwing a harpoon. There was already a message within what I saw.

Adrien Brody

I've got my advanced scuba diving license. I'm playing tennis and exercising. I ride my bike everywhere. I've been finding new things. I've been more creative in music and doing different videos. And just meeting different people and being around and present. I'm wonderful when I'm just on nothing.

Albert Hammond, Jr.

In Cuba we use our champions to promote the sport.

Alberto Juantorena

Then I received support from the Government to compete for my country, and to represent Cuba in competition.

Alberto Juantorena

My main point in this regard was to compete for my country and my people and to receive the support of the entire Cuban society, to carry my flag in whatever competition I was in, the Olympic Games, Pan-American Games.

Alberto Juantorena

Those who have always had faith in its final success can do no less than rejoice as if it was our own triumph after five years of daily struggle to impose Cuban music on the European continent.

Alejo Carpentier

I gladly accepted the commission but was uncertain about what the end result would be. On the one hand, Cuban music was conquering the world; being heard everywhere, and our small island was already producing one of the popular musical genres of the 20th century.

Alejo Carpentier

My parents fled from a Cuban dictatorship in search of freedom. Growing up, I saw my parents struggle... I am here today because of them. My success is their success. Their sacrifice and perseverance made my education possible.

Alexander Acosta

You know, it's very clear, as one looks back on history again of the Cold War that, following the crisis in Cuba, following the Khrushchev - beating down of Jack Kennedy in Vienna, that President Kennedy believed that we had to join the battle for the Third World, and the next crisis that developed in that regards was Vietnam.

Alexander Haig

I look really good in a scuba suit.

Alison Brie

Like the assassination of JFK, everybody alive then can remember where they were that Doomsday Week of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. That Saturday, 27 October, was, and remains, the closest the world has come to nuclear holocaust - the blackest day of a horrendous week.

Alistair Horne

Over the past years, I have lectured many times on the Cuban missile crisis, most provocatively to 200 senior officers of the former Soviet army in Moscow in 1991, among them KGB generals. There, my knowledge of Penkovsky's role was thoroughly confirmed, and so was the Soviet military men's residual sense of humiliation at Khrushchev's 'blink'.

Alistair Horne

In Tbilisi in 1990, I recall watching zealous Georgians smash statues of Lenin and Stalin. A few days earlier, though, in Moscow I had been invited to address the Red Army, as one of the first Brits to benefit from Glasnost. The subject they chose: The Cuban Missile Crisis.

Alistair Horne

I realized that I had traveled to Havana during what now seems like the childhood of the Cuban Revolution, if you think that Fidel has now been in power for 44 extremely long years. I started looking at the revolution as history, and not as part of the daily news.

Alma Guillermoprieto

Fidel Castro's most scandalous show trial was not mounted against a political figure but against a writer: Heberto Padilla. In 1971, after 38 days of detention, Mr. Padilla was forced to 'confess' at the Cuban writers' union to the charges of 'subversive activities.'

Alvaro Enrigue

I have swung on a flying trapeze, explored a glacier, and been hit in the face by a shark's tail while scuba diving. I like to throw myself fully into projects and adventures, which is probably how I managed to publish a book in the first place.

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

During my youth, the idea of moving from Lebanon was unthinkable. Then I began to realise I might have to go, like my grandfather, uncles and others who left for America, Egypt, Australia, Cuba.

Amin Maalouf

My goal was always to be working on the biggest stage in the world: Hollywood. Even when I was doing 'The Bill,' I approached the work like it was a Hollywood classic such as 'Training Day' or 'Boyz n the Hood.' So to have worked with some of the greats I've admired, such as Forest Whitaker, Kathy Bates, Cuba Gooding Jr., etc., it warms me.

Aml Ameen