Waiting for Snow in Havana Quotes

“they dance so fast, good and evil, these two polar opposites. So tightly and furiously. You can’t dance with just one of these partners. If you cut into their dance, you end up with both, as a threesome. And if you fear cutting into the dance and taking a spin with good and evil, you end up dancing with the cross-eyed, ugly chaperone. Even the deepest, most wondrous love can sometimes bring you to that dismal dance, and then every single tune is a tango. A bad tango composed by an angry, drunken Argentine just for you and your loved one. A tango that never ends. But back to those Cuban parties: no dancing there. None at all. Furious”
― Carlos Eire, Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy

“If you ever need to awaken quickly from a deep, deep sleep arrange to have two Cuban mothers shout at your bedside as if their children have been hurt.”
― Carlos Eire, Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy

“we had it on a cake. Keik. Or more properly, in that relaxed, African Spanish of Cuba, kei. That’s what we called them, keikes, or keiis, in the plural. Not tortas or pasteles, the proper Spanish names. Never, ever, ever did we call a cake a bollo, as in other Spanish-speaking countries. In Cuba bollo had somehow evolved into the swear word for a woman’s”
― Carlos Eire, Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy