Ben Rhodes Quotes

It didn't get any more glamorous than Havana, Cuba, in the 1950s. I used to go there when I was a waiter on a cruise ship.

I've been to Cuba many times.

In 1958, I was shooting a movie in Florida, and I decided to go to Havana, Cuba, to see what it was like.

I'd like to go to Cuba.

I think that I've tried many times to get Cuba in my writings, especially Havana, which was once a great and fascinating city.

I lived in Cuba - I was there for one year in the 1950s. We built the famous nightclub, which is still there, Tropicana, and a restaurant, Montecatini, that I opened is still there. I was there when the U.S. ambassador said everyone must leave because Castro was arriving the next morning.

I went to Cuba maybe eight or nine times.

I always wanted to go to Cuba growing up. It was this fascinating, forbidden country that seemed to have a lot of politics and folklore and history behind it.

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.

In Cuba, I didn't even have a bicycle.

Ten Presidents have tried to do something about Cuba and the statis is quo.

In January 1961, the United States severed diplomatic relations in response to Cuban nationalisation of U.S.-owned sugar plantations, banks and businesses.

Cuba has become a symbol of courageous resistance to attack. Since 1959, Cuba has been under attack from the hemispheric superpower.

Havana, for all its smells, sweat, crumbling walls, isolation, and difficult history, is the most romantic city in the world.

Well, you know, I left Cuba as a kid when I was 6 years old back in 1971.

Fidel Castro for me is like a father.

Cuba is like going to a whole other planet. It's so different but it's so similar to the United States, to Miami. It's like a doppelgaenger. It's the mirror image. And I have no doubt, that once Cuba becomes democratic, that it will be the favorite tourist destination for Americans.

That first play I did in New York, Rogelio Martinez's 'When It's Cocktail Time in Cuba,' I played a young Fidel Castro.

The Bay of Pigs is one of America's most infamous Cold War blunders, and it has been studied, debated, and dramatized endlessly ever since.

Cuba is such a beautiful country, and everywhere you go, there's music and people dancing - especially in Havana.

Che came in 1963, shortly after I had come to power.

When I was 14, in Cuba, I met Fidel Castro with my dad, and it was really impressive. And on a totally different level, I met Justin Timberlake!

The first thing out of Fidel Castro's mouth to me, he looked me right in the eye and said, 'You're a man of great courage.'

I always felt that the Cubans were being pushed into the Soviet Bloc by American policy.

The greatest promotion I ever had on a newspaper was when 'The Washington Post' suddenly promoted me from city-side general assignment reporter to Latin American correspondent and sent me off to Cuba. Fidel Castro had just come to power. It was a very exciting assignment, but also very serious.