Rican Quotes

The farther away you writers stay, the better I like it. You know why? Because you’re trying to create a bad image of me… you do it because I’m black and Puerto Rican, but I’m proud to be Puerto Rican.

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 grew up dancing salsa – you know, a traditional Puerto Rican dance.

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.

They said you’d really have to be something to be like Babe Ruth. But Babe Ruth was an American player. What we needed was a Puerto Rican player they could say that about, someone to look up to and try to equal.

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.

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.

I’ve seen a lot of the great fighters, so I’ve always been a fan of the Puerto Rican fighters and I’m happy to be one myself.

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.’

I just want to keep the Puerto Rican tradition of champions alive.

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

I wake up every day, and I’m a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx. Every single day.

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

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.

I am much more wired to be an athlete than anything else. I understand the ‘hard work = payoff’ equation in sports. I run marathons and I box. And that’s my Puerto Rican flag hanging in Freddie Roach’s Wild Card Boxing gym. I gave it to him. My last N.Y.C. marathon time I ran in three hours flat.

The Costa Rican government is prioritizing laying fiber optic over paving roads. Costa Rica is trying to become one of the Internet societies. This is happening throughout the world.

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.

I am a product of affirmative action. I am the perfect affirmative action baby. I am Puerto Rican, born and raised in the south Bronx. My test scores were not comparable to my colleagues at Princeton and Yale. Not so far off so that I wasn’t able to succeed at those institutions.

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.’

I’m Puerto Rican, but I represent everybody.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

And I come from a very proud Hispanic family. We’re proud to be Latino. We’re proud to be Peruvian. And my dad’s side is proud to be Puerto Rican.

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.

Once I tried to find myself as a musician and a composer, I went back and saw that there was something special about Puerto Rican music. I knew that before, but had never sat down and thought about it. The more I learned about it, the more it found its way into the music I was writing.

I’m half Puerto Rican.

I like to cook Puerto Rican food. That’s what I grew up on: rice, beans, meat, some Italian-American food. I know my way around the kitchen.

I’m very proud being Puerto Rican. I’m American. That is what America is made of – people from different lands.

What really is nasty is showing your back to the Puerto Rican people.

I often say to my friends that I felt too Puerto Rican to live in the States; then I felt too American to live in Puerto Rico. So when I settled back in Puerto Rico in 1992, I had to come to terms with all of that.

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.

I’m such a true Puerto Rican.

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 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.

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.

We took dancehall and hip-hop and mixed it in the middle. I knew we had something. I thought, ‘This sound is Puerto Rican sound.’

Once I walked out of my house into to the Puerto Rican Day parade. It was usually a five-minute walk to work, but that day it took me a half-hour to get to 30 Rock.

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?’

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.

We’re the first not-white family to ever live in the governor’s mansion. My son-in-law is Puerto Rican. I have a beautiful little granddaughter who is half Korean and half Latina. I’m the only white guy in the house.

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

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?’

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.

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

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.

America is the only place in the world where you can work in an Arab home in a Scandinavian neighborhood and find a Puerto Rican baby eating matzo balls with chopsticks.