Puerto Quotes

I’m half Puerto Rican and every Friday we have rice and beans and chicken in my house – so that’s like a very Latin staple. It’s just so comforting. I look forward to every single Friday because I just can’t wait for my rice and beans and chicken.

I had the pleasure, as Robin said, to live a childhood dream as many young Americans and Puerto Rican children live that play youth baseball. And I feel honored and very thankful for that opportunity.

I come from a pop background, but I’m also a Puerto Rican and I do feel this music. My approach to salsa is a humble one, and I defy anybody to prove that I’m faking it.

If Congress does its job in this regard, the residents of Puerto Rico will be empowered to act in their own self-interest and express their future political status aspirations accordingly.

As U.S. citizens, Puerto Rico has paid their part.

But the only comparison that I want to Lenny Bruce is that I’m funny. I’m Freddie Prinze, Puerto Rican all the way.

Medalla is Puerto Rico’s national treasure, as I call it. It’s a Puerto Rican national beer – a great light beer for a beach day.

I’m a Puerto Rican woman whose family has roots in Regla de Ocha, also known as Santeria.

I love all Puerto Rican food. I love rice and beans. I like anything with steak, chicken, pork. But I like chocolate and potato chips, too. I eat that when my wife goes away and isn’t looking.

While the American people have had a big heart, President Trump has had a big mouth, and he has used it to insult the people of Puerto Rico.

I choose to be American, I choose to live in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, I choose to have Puerto Rican/Jewish neighbors, and I choose to maintain my Chinese identity.

Puerto Rico got too futuristic with the electronic reggaeton. It lost the essence of the reggae music.

Puerto Rico is the perfect meeting place between Spain, the country I come from, and America, the country where I now belong. The meeting point of two worlds where magic can happen.

Fifty thousand people in Mexico have been murdered. Puerto Penasco, 60 miles south of our border, just had five people and a police officer killed. That is like part of Arizona, and it is spilling over into our state.

The majority of Puerto Ricans in Florida and New York are Democrats, but nonetheless, we have Republican governors.

Elijah Cummings and his colleagues in the House are hung up on giving more money to Puerto Rico when we have our own farmers who are fixing to lose their farm.

I’m Puerto Rican, but I represent everybody.

Apparently tired of waiting for clear direction from Congress, the people of Puerto Rico have used the tools provided by their own local constitution to schedule a vote for Dec. 13 on the status of the island.

My style has a lot to do with where I’ve been brought up. I’ve lived half my life in Puerto Rico and the other half in Florida, so I listen to music in English as well as Spanish.

I don’t diet. I’m Puerto Rican! You can never take my rice, pork, and beans away.

The common goals of Puerto Rico and the United States have always been for the benefit of both.

I was discriminated against because I was Jewish, Italian, black and Puerto Rican. But maybe the worst prejudice I experienced was against the poor. I grew up on welfare and often had to move in the middle of the night because we couldn’t pay the rent.

Even though Puerto Rico will always be my hometown, I feel Miami is my second home.

I’m proud of who I am, and I’m proud I grew up in Puerto Rico.

Being a Puerto Rican artist, I support all kinds of projects that are developed on my beautiful island that in some way or another put our Puerto Rican flag up.

It is quite understandable that Puerto Ricans seek to preserve a cultural sense of identity without separating politically from U.S. national sovereignty.

When I was 13 years old, my family and I lived on a farm in Puerto Rico that didn’t have clean, running water all the time.

The first Latin music that blew my mind was bumba, which was a Puerto Rican beat.

I love it here in Puerto Rico. I love the weather and the beautiful people. Everything about the culture is like where I grew up in Philadelphia.

Puerto Rico’s participation per capita in the armed forces is more than most states, yet they can’t vote for their commander in chief.

When my mom, Mercedes, and her younger sister, Juanita, first came from Puerto Rico, they were the youngest in the family. They had to jump into a new community and really learn English, assimilate, and adapt – and I saw that. I grew up in that community.

I did not feel ‘evil’ when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years.

Global Force is creating a product that has people from independents, and guys who people know are good in their area, and they’ll take on guys from around the world in New Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Australia.

As a Puerto Rican, I’m always going be grateful to Jose Andres.

The ‘Dangerous’ album has producers like Tiny, who to me is very special. Also, Luny Tunes, Nesty La Mente Maestra, Nelly La Arma Secreta, Haze, and El Ingeniero. I wanted to use everyone who makes music in Puerto Rico and beyond to have variety.

I live in Puerto Rico, my family lives in Puerto Rico, my friends. What happens in Puerto Rico matters to me.

You know, you may not be born in Puerto Rico, but Puerto Rican is definitely born in you.

The 3.5 million people in Puerto Rico are American citizens. They deserve fair and equal treatment as Americans.

The most important thing is to find the balance between city and nature. I have that ‘hippie quality’ – my husband is a super-hippie Los Angeles boy – so we’ll have to make time to go to Puerto Rico, and upstate New York, and be sure we get to do outdoorsy stuff like that.

I was ballet dancing at four, playing piano by six, and doing commercials by 12. When I was 21, I was on the number one live comedy show in Puerto Rico. I told my parents, ‘I’m going to New York to become a performer.’ And I left.

I don’t have a problem with a board that advises, that supervises, one with which we can have a discussion. But we will never accept a board that has control over Puerto Rico’s affairs.

Puerto Ricans are United States citizens, and I think that the issue of statehood or independence needs to be addressed and needs to be resolved.

So many people in this country have a dual loyalty. They have loyalty to America, but they also are determined to have their parade up Fifth Avenue once a year… a Cuban parade or a Puerto Rican parade – many other countries. So they really don’t forget.

I’ll live in Puerto Rico until the day I die.

Federal program and services outlay in Puerto Rico is approximately $10 billion per year.

After one hundred years of federal rule, the United States House of Representatives has moved to provide for the first meaningful route to self-determination for the Puerto Rican people under our federal system.

I am half Puerto Rican, a quarter German and a quarter black. That was always a big issue for me – being mixed race – because casting directors tended to be very like, ‘OK, are you Hispanic for this role?’ ‘Or is she going to be African American?’

It’s great to be Puerto Rican, because Puerto Rico loves boxing. They don’t have a lot of major sports down there.

If U.S. national sovereignty continues, it is only as a state that Puerto Rico will have permanent 10th Amendment powers over its non-federal affairs, as well as voting power in Congress.

I’m not messing with skiing. You can’t get this Puerto Rican on the slope. Uh-uh.

The government of Puerto Rico has every right to hold a plebiscite, to consult the people of Puerto Rico regarding their wishes. But the truth is that for a change in the status of Puerto Rico to happen, you need both Congress and Puerto Rico agreeing to it.

I think that Puerto Rico just has this calm and peace.

There were a lot of kids from Puerto Rico at my high school in Florida; people always assumed I was Puerto Rican. Even now in California, I get talked to on the street in Spanish constantly!

We’re going to Puerto Rico, where we’re gonna close. And we’re so excited, we can’t see straight.

My first memory of playing music was when I was 3 years old in Puerto Rico. I played percussion on a tin can behind my uncle, who played the cuatro.

I was in Puerto Rico going to school, and it was very jarring for me. ‘Traumatic’ is the only way that I can say it. Kids were making fun of me: ‘Oh, you’re a Yankee.’ And I acted out a lot. A lot. But looking back, and through a little bit of therapy, everything I am has to do with that time.

I’m half Puerto Rican.

I’m a very fertile Puerto Rican.

I’m a little bit of everything. Sometimes people think I’m not Puerto Rican, because my name doesn’t sound Spanish.

Culturally, musically, historically Cuba and Puerto Rico are like two wings of one bird.

I am second-generation American, and my grandparents are from Puerto Rico.

I don’t call myself Latin, I call myself Puerto Rican.

I was very surprised to see people who recognize me in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rican culture is very lively; very lively people; very warm people; and the food is really great. We’re all about cooking a lot of food and having family around, we’re kind of loud. It’s that sort of vibe and it’s great.

Coming from Puerto Rico and having that be my musical universe for the majority of my life no doubt strongly impacts my music.

It is unbelievable that the federal court itself ignores that rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution apply in Puerto Rico.

I have the Puerto Rico power and the Philadelphia toughness and Philadelphia skills.

When I came up in hip hop, there was no such thing as a Puerto Rican rapper doing hip hop for many mainstream people, so I was the ship, the captain, and the crew.

I’m proud of both sides, and they are both really well known to be fighting heritages, so I tell everyone all the time – they say, ‘What are you’? – I say I’m Irish. I’m Puerto Rican. I guess I was born to fight.

I would say one of the most romantic things I’ve done is I’ve taken a girlfriend back to her hometown when she hadn’t been back for years. It was in Puerto Rico, and we stayed there for about a week and a half. She showed me the different places she grew up around.

I don’t think it’s fair that you can say I’m not a Puerto Rican fighter because I wasn’t born in Puerto Rico, when my blood is Puerto Rican.

Puerto Rico is a powerful island.

Being Puerto Rican, born and raised on the streets of New York, you go, ‘Wow, you’re still friends with your ex, man? Really? That’s weird.’ I don’t play that.

The first day that I get to Fort Myers, there was a newspaper down there. The newspaper said, ‘Puerto Rican hot dog arrives in town.’

Internal self-government under a local constitution was authorized by Congress and approved by the residents in 1952, but federal law is supreme in Puerto Rico and residents do not have voting representation in the Congress.

The tropical island of Puerto Rico couldn’t be more different than America’s rust belt or the mountains of Appalachia, but here too live Americans who feel forgotten by our leaders and left behind by our economy.

I’d work to make it hip again to spend time in our fabled and fabulous land. But with a Puerto Rican father and a Jewish mother, I would probably be better suited as mayor of New York.

I fought Miguel Cotto in Madison Square Garden on the eve of the Puerto Rican Day parade – it was like fighting the devil in Hell.

I was born in Puerto Rico – I used to sit in the sun until I looked like a piece of bacon. It’s a wonder now that I don’t look like an old wallet. I’m a very fortunate person.

My dad is Dominican, my mother’s Puerto Rican, and I got into bachata at the age of 10 or 11. When I started listening, it had a reputation for being music for hick people. I thought that had to be changed. I was born and raised in the Bronx, and I knew you make something cool if you’re cool.

The reality is that we have a weakened energy infrastructure, and anything above a Category 3 hurricane hitting Puerto Rico would be devastating towards that infrastructure.

I feel that, as a Puerto Rican and Latin American musician, a lot of the stuff that I write, even if I mean it or not, is gonna have some elements of that.

Certain roles for older women are aimed at certain older actresses – I’m not one of those. I’ve been offered any number of Puerto Rican grandmas that I’ve turned down.

American imperialism is often traced to the takeover of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii in 1898.

I’d say it’s even harder to cater to Hispanics than to the lesbian or gay community. We’re so culturally separated: Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Mexicans, Venezuelans. We’re all so different.

There is no price tag on an American life – whether it’s in Florida, Texas, or Puerto Rico.

When I would go into Madison Square Garden, I wasn’t the most popular guy. Madison Square Garden, there’s 16,000 Puerto Ricans with knives and great radios and stuff.

I’m Cuban and Puerto Rican and Miami is very Cuban oriented. Growing up around the music – all of the salsa and meringue influenced me as an artist. I find myself gravitating to latin influences, sounds.

Islands are going to suffer from climate change in very, very difficult ways. And it’s not just Pacific islands. It’s not just Puerto Rico.

I love being in Puerto Rico. I am so excited that they embrace me, and I feel that I am giving back to my fans.

Puerto Rico’s relationship with music is everything. It’s an island full of talent and if you grow up there, you grow up living and breathing music.

Baby names are a big debate in my family. Like true Colombian and Puerto Rican families, everybody and their mother is putting their two cents in – everything from Jose to Francisco to Victorio to Rain has been suggested.

My mother likes what I cook, but doesn’t think it’s French. My wife is Puerto Rican and Cuban, so I eat rice and beans. We have a place in Mexico, but people think I’m the quintessential French chef.

I’ve always thought that jazz needs to be heard by a wider audience in Puerto Rico. I want to put together a series of free concerts in the small towns – one with Miles Davis music, another with bebop, maybe Duke Ellington. I want younger people to see what is possible.

To look back and reflect on the career and sort of look at the seasons of it before I got to the WWF, working the territories and Japan and Texas, Puerto Rico, and then the WWF and WCW, then obviously the TNA years – it’s been quite a journey, I’ll say that.

I have a home in Puerto Rico, and I see what is happening on the islands there.

My heart is half Puerto Rican, half Canadian. That is how I feel.

I grew up listening to Puerto Rican music like everybody else. But when I listened to Charlie Parker for the first time, I said, ‘How does this guy play so fast?’

You’re not from Puerto Rico, so you should say Puerto Rico like all the other people from the place that you come from.

My grandfather came over from Puerto Rico and raised his kids speaking English so that it would be easier for them to assimilate.

However, the sovereignty of the states is constitutionally defined and recognized, while the powers of the local government in Puerto Rico are defined by, and subject to alteration under, federal statutory law.

I grew up in a house where we danced all the time because we’re Puerto Rican.

I wasn’t born to a wealthy or powerful family – mother from Puerto Rico, dad from the South Bronx.

The citizens of Puerto Rico pay taxes with no representation every day, because Puerto Rico is not a state. And the rules only became more confusing the more I looked into them during my time there.

It may be that a majority of superheroes are white males. But that’s because they used to all be white males, except for Wonder Woman and Black Canary and maybe one or two others. Now there are Spanish, Puerto Rican comic book superheroes, black superheroes, and women superheroes.

At one point, I bought brown contacts because people told me I wasn’t Latin enough to play Latin, and I’m Puerto Rican. I went and bought brown contacts just so I could go in and look more Latino… but that was something that I’ve dealt with in this business.

That is why, with optimism instead of fear, all those who want to see Puerto Rico’s status resolved should seek the truth about each option, including the upside and the downside of each.

I see myself like what Drake did in the game. I came with melodies and different lyrics, from a different place – reggaeton is from Puerto Rico; Drake is from Canada.

I was a houseman, the lowest. I was just above – in the hierarchy of jobs, I was just above the Puerto Rican dishwashers – just above, so I felt superior to them.

Over 90 percent of parents in Puerto Rico want their children to be totally fluent in English.

I don’t see it as pressure at all. I see it as such an honor to just in some sort of way represent Puerto Rico and Hispanics and all the girls out there.

I believe – and so do most Puerto Ricans – that the ideas that will prevail in the new century will be those similar to the basic principles of commonwealth, of national reaffirmation, and political and economic integration among the peoples of the world.

I always tell my wife she’s married to the Puerto Rican Elvis.

Puerto Rican culture is very different from Mexican culture. Part of the Mexican psychology is the idea of being an immigrant or being illegal or being confused with that. That doesn’t happen with Puerto Ricans, because you’re a commonwealth.

The real problem with Puerto Rico is that it keeps losing its best and brightest. It keeps losing its leaders and its future leaders due to a lack of opportunity.

When I heard Puerto Ricans in New York City, it sounded very strange. And the first time I heard someone from Spain, I thought they had a speech impediment!

My grandfather was extremely dark and from Puerto Rico, but his brother had blond hair and blue eyes. There are so many different shades, and I think Hollywood has yet to realize that.

It is interesting that both Chicano and Puerto Rican art in the United States form an important part of the Civil Rights legacy and dialog.

It’s amazing to be a Puerto Rican fighter; we have a great history of fighters.

The way you pronounce words the Puerto Rico way, it’s not really global for music. Colombians speak some of the best Spanish in the world. So having a Colombian next to me every time I write makes my music more international.

I’m a raucous Puerto Rican!

Puerto Rico, within the span of two weeks, received two Category 4-5 hurricanes. That has never happened anywhere. The devastation has been enormous.

Growing up in the Midwest, Boston, and Alabama, I didn’t know any Puerto Ricans… at least, I didn’t know if I knew any Puerto Ricans. The only Puerto Rican that I had ever even heard of was Juan Epstein, one of the students from the classic 1970s sitcom ‘Welcome Back, Kotter.’

Puerto Rico is one of those places you can be as quiet or as crazy as you want, because there’s so much nightlife. I have to take the craziness carefully.

We must all work together to bring the best to Puerto Rico.

I’m not going to impose my vision on the people of Puerto Rico.

My mother always gives the best advice. When I left Puerto Rico to pursue my dreams, she always supported me and said to me, ‘I’m never going to cut your wings, so don’t let anyone else do that to you.’ That has been my philosophy through life. I want to share that valuable lesson with my little girl someday.

A lot of people say things because I wasn’t born here, but in my heart, I know that I am a true Puerto Rican champion.

The majority of the people of Puerto Rico support commonwealth.

I represent the streets of Puerto Rico around the world.

Pageants were an amazing platform that gave a little girl like me from the mountains of my beautiful Puerto Rico a chance to travel, explore the world, meet amazing people, work for great charities and be a voice to empower women wherever I went. For all those things, I am grateful.

What I can tell you is that for Puerto Rico being such a small island, it has culturally impacted the entire world.

I haven’t traveled in Africa nearly as much as I’d like to. I’ve been there a few times, and I’d like to learn more about the various cultures in Africa. But that’s the basis point of where all of the music that I love is based upon, from Africa to Cuba to Puerto Rico to South America.

I am a Puerto Rican. I could have been born on the moon, but I’m still Puerto Rican.

Today, the District of Columbia has more residents than at least two other states; Puerto Rico has more than 20. With numbers like that, admitting either or both to the union is less a political power play on the Democrats’ part than the late-19th-century partisan move that still warps American politics.

Puerto Rico is complicated. The people are complicated. The history is complicated. The story of the United States’ relationship to Puerto Rico is complicated.

Many people think that Puerto Rico would be a Democratic state just by virtue of the inclination of the Latino population in the United States, but the reality is that I see Puerto Rico as a battleground state.

I was actually born and raised in Puerto Rico. I moved to the States when I was 19. I was very impressed early on by being around people who spoke my language and ate the same food and listened to the same music, dressed the same. But then you look around and, you know, you’re not in Puerto Rico.

We have over 30 dams in Puerto Rico, and I think only one works. We’re here in the rain forest, and we have plenty of water. It’s insane.

In terms of the revolution, I believe that the revolution will be a revolution of dispossessed people in this country: that’s the Mexican American, the Puerto Rican American, the American Indian, and black people.

One-third of all professional baseball players come from Latin America, and Sosa is following role models such as the late Roberto Clemente, a Puerto Rican, from whom he adopted the No. 21. Now he is a model for others.

I just want to go down as one of the best Puerto Rican and best Latin fighters ever.

My mother was born in Sinaloa, and she moved to Los Angeles when she was three years old. My father was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and moved here when he was 19. They met at the Palladium in Hollywood, and they’ve been together from that moment on.

Expenditures have gone rampant in Puerto Rico: lack of accountability – total lack of accountability.

For far too long, Washington has denied the American citizens of Puerto Rico vital human services and adequate health care funding.

In Puerto Rico, there has developed a culture of taking out loans and not paying them back. That has ended.

The only way to fix Puerto Rico is with brain game, to bring the intellectual and human capital there – in a way that it’s done with the right intention.

In historical and constitutional terms, the recent political status vote in Puerto Rico was a necessary but obviously not decisive step on the road of self-determination leading to full self-government.

Some of our best fighters are not only Puerto Rican greats but all-time greats of the sport. Carlos Ortiz, Wilfredo Gomez, Wilfredo Benitez and Felix ‘Tito’ Trinidad and many others have made Puerto Rican boxing what it is today, and I am only an extension of their greatness.

Nobody can doubt Puerto Rico, sociologically, linguistically, culturally, and historically, is a nation. We have our own rich culture, thousand years of history, unique territory, and almost everyone’s first language is Spanish, not English.