Dominican Quotes

#1. I spoke English at school and Spanish at home, and I'm always eating Dominican food, listening to Dominican music.

Prince Royce

#2. I write for the people I grew up with. I took extreme pains for my book to not be a native informant. Not: 'This is Dominican food. This is a Spanish word.' I trust my readers, even non-Spanish ones.

Junot Diaz

#3. The Dominican Republic is my holy land, my Mecca.

Raquel Cepeda

#4. I keep active because I have not announced my retirement, because that is something that takes time and you have to plan it. Plus, it is something that the Dominican people expected.

Pedro Martinez

#5. It might interest you that just as the U.S. was ramping up its involvement in Vietnam, LBJ launched an illegal invasion of the Dominican Republic (April 28, 1965). (Santo Domingo was Iraq before Iraq was Iraq.)

Junot Diaz

#6. Because I can't seem to escape it. It's a way for me to address and counter my questions about what it means to be human, or, in my case a Dominican human who grew up in New Jersey.

Junot Diaz

#7. When I was a kid, I believed in Santa Claus. But it was very tough because in the Dominican ... there are not a lot of rich people there.

Alfonso Soriano

#8. I believe it is my responsibility to do what I can for children and people with Down syndrome as well as in my native Dominican Republic.

Albert Pujols

#9. Ask any of your elders and they will tell you: Trujillo might have been a dictator, but, he was a Dominican dictator, which is another way of saying he was the number-one bellaco in the country.

Junot Diaz

#10. I've dated interracially a lot. I grew up in Harlem, so I've dated Latins, Dominican, Guyanese, Cuban, black, white.

Mekhi Phifer

#11. You're Dominican only if you do this, this, and that. And if you do this and that, you'll be accepted to a certain degree and if you don't, people will scorn you for it.

Junot Diaz

#12. I tell people all of the time that they would make any show in this business - whether it's black, white, Hispanic, Jewish, Colombian, Dominican - whatever. They'll make it if it sells. It's a business. It's not personal.

Kirk Acevedo

#13. Sammy Sosa grew up without a father in the back of a converted public hospital in San Pedro de Macoris, a dusty seaside town in the Dominican Republic. His father, Juan Montero, died when Sosa was 5.

Bill Dedman

#14. I was neither black enough for the black kids or Dominican enough for the Dominican kids. I didn't have a safe category.

Junot Diaz

#15. When we are youths in the Dominican, we pick up bats and balls because baseball is part of what we grow up with. The fun feeling you get playing keeps your head up when you encounter difficult times.

Vladimir Guerrero

#16. My favorite vacation spot is a beautiful beach. I've been to many, many beaches on many continents: Mombasa, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Barbados, Mexico and the U.S. What's beautiful about beach communities is for whatever reason, they feel like vacation to me.

Hill Harper

#17. I have not broken the laws of the United States or the laws of the Dominican Republic.

Sammy Sosa

#18. I want to be known as Dominican-that's what I am, 100 percent ... I have a duty and responsibility to continue the legacy of Dominicans in baseball.

Alex Rodriguez

#19. From Arawaks he later met on Hispaniola (the island of the Dominican Republic and Haiti) he learned of other people to the south, whom the Spanish called the Cariba or Caniba, from which we get the words "Caribbean" and "cannibal.

Lincoln Paine

#20. Players from the Dominican Republic have a history of not playing well in cold weather ... The ball hurts their hands when they make contact.

Grady Little

#21. I have never injected myself or had anyone inject me with anything. I have not broken the laws of the United States or the laws of the Dominican Republic. I have been tested as recently as 2004, and I am clean.

Sammy Sosa

#22. The next day at breakfast he asked his mother: Am I ugly? She sighed. Well, hijo, you certainly don't take after me. Dominican parents! You got to love them!

Junot Diaz

#23. When did this fiend strike last?"
Ah ... The last report was from the Dominican Republic. That was, let me see, two nights ago."
Dominican Republic! Why in the world would he go there?"
Exactly what I would like to know.

Anne Rice

#24. I'm just this Dominican kid from New Jersey.

Junot Diaz

#25. When Harvard University opened its doors in 1636, there were already well-established universities in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru.

Oscar Arias

#26. Jazz has a strong following in certain circles and there are annual jazz festivals in Puerto Plata and at Casa de Teatro in the capital. Grammy-winning Dominican jazz pianist Michael Camilo has had success on a global level. The classical music and ballet

Ginnie Bedggood

#27. We have a pride of who we are as Latinos, regardless if we're Puerto Rican, Dominican, Venezuelan, and we're very proud of our customs and our history and our traditions and who we are.

Juan Luis Guerra

#28. I represent New York, I represent the Bronx, I represent the Dominican Republic. And I always have that in mind with everything that I do.

Prince Royce

#29. I'm a big fan of Caribbean food, Spanish food, Dominican food - like rice and beans. Hot sauce just adds a different layer of boom to the food, you feel me?

Theophilus London

#30. Playing in New York is special to me because you are surrounded by so many communities and a strong Latin community, including the Washington Heights neighborhood. I come to Washington Heights for real Dominican food that reminds me of my hometown, and it's a great place to visit.

Robinson Cano

#31. I was born in Texas and I lived there 'till I was 8. Then I moved to the Dominican Republic with my mom, lived there for two years and forgot every word of English I knew.

Michelle Rodriguez

#32. My parents are Dominican. I would always go to the Dominican Republic, and I fell in love with Bachata, which comes from the Dominican Republic.

Prince Royce

#33. On Veterans Day, I can't help think of my uncles who volunteered for the service after fleeing a brutal regime in the Dominican Republic. They hadn't been in America long, but they were already so grateful for its opportunities that they were eager to serve.

Thomas Perez

#34. Just about every Latin American country has sent players to the big leagues, from the Dominican Republic to Costa Rica.

Cheech Marin

#35. In the Dominican, there are a lot of kids who need help. I just do that for my mom because my mom liked to help a lot of kids in the Dominican. Whoever I am right now is because of her. She gave me the education; she always took care of me like a mommy.

Alfonso Soriano

#36. As far as preference between fall and spring collections, I have none that I prefer to design. With fall you have a lot more items, but of course I am from the Dominican Republic, so I love the warm weather.

Oscar De La Renta

#37. The best way to help the Latino community is to give back. I love giving back; I'm quiet about God and what I do, but we do a lot in the Dominican Republic.

Daddy Yankee

#38. We all should be proud of the United States. For those of us that came from the Dominican, we've been able to come here, work, make money and become somebody in our lives. We've gotten a huge opportunity from the U.S.

Robinson Cano

#39. The Dominican Republic says 'We're black behind the ears.' And in Mexico, 'there's a black grandma in the closet.' They know, they've just been intermarrying for a long time. But if we did the DNA of everyone in Mexico a whole lot of people would have a whole lot of black in them.

Henry Louis Gates

#40. I spend more time in New York than the Dominican. I play here, I live here, so why not become a citizen?

Robinson Cano

#41. We knew Down South. Everyone had one. Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico.

Jacqueline Woodson

#42. Even as a small child, I wondered why the Dominican nuns who educated me were subservient to the Jesuit priests who educated my brothers.

Janine Di Giovanni

#43. I have a very powerful sense of place, but I have a very powerful sense of being a migrant, so it's both. It seems like I'm always leaving my home. That's part of the formula. I love the Dominican Republic. I go back all the time. I love New Jersey. Go back all the time.

Junot Diaz

#44. I am Dominican American. My father was born and raised in the U.S. and his heritage is German and Eastern European, and my mother hails from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Monica Raymund

#45. I entered the diocesan seminary. I liked the Dominicans, and I had Dominican friends. But then I chose the Society of Jesus, which I knew well because the seminary was entrusted to the Jesuits. Three things in particular struck me about the Society: the missionary spirit, community and discipline.

Pope Francis

#46. When I was living in the Dominican Republic, the local kids became a part of my family.

Maika Monroe

#47. My parents, fleeing a repressive regime in the Dominican Republic, were embraced by this country and taught us to love it in return. After my father served proudly in the U.S. Army, they settled in Buffalo, N.Y., and were able to live the American Dream.

Thomas Perez

#48. People can say what they want, but historically, feminism in the Dominican Republic has been extremely strong.

Junot Diaz

#49. It's going to be crazy. I'm guessing when we play against the Dominicans, half the field will be Dominican fans and half will be Puerto Rican fans. With all the big-time players in the World Classic, it's going to be huge.

Carlos Beltran

#50. A message of consolation to Greek brothers in their prison camps, and to my Haitian brothers and Nicaraguan brothers and Dominican brothers and South African brothers and Spanish brothers and to my brothers in South Vietnam, all in their prison camps: You are in the free world!

E.L. Doctorow

#51. I'm made in the Dominican. I'm from baseball country.

Robinson Cano

#52. I'm pretty sure that China is way bigger than the Dominican.

Matt Kemp

#53. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

Smedley Butler

#54. Last summer had meant lots of Sam Adams Summer Ale by herself on hot weekend days when it seemed like just her and the Dominican Day parade.

Stephanie Clifford

#55. As a Dominican man, you're socialized to be a playboy. You spend a lot of time being taught that women are important, but without the really positive framework of why. You figure out quickly it's because of culo (ass). But there is a sense that it's not that simple.

Junot Diaz

#56. The Ecuadorian, Mexican, Dominican and Salvadorian cooks I've worked with over the years make most CIA-educated white boys look like clumsy, sniveling little punks. In

Anthony Bourdain

#57. My grandmother was this amazing woman in the Dominican Republic who used to read tea leaves and palms. She would cure people in her neighborhood by going into her garden, plucking a couple of leaves, and brewing teas.

Selenis Leyva

#58. One day the "Good Morning Everyone" team announces that the government of the Dominican Republic has offered to bring all thirty-three miners and their families to a relaxing resort in that Caribbean island nation.

Hector Tobar

#59. The trouble is that after nine years as a Jack of all trades and Master of the Dominican Order, I have no expertise on anything except airports and exotic foods.

Timothy Radcliffe

#60. Fans love Sosa for his exuberance, for the kisses he blows to his mother, wife and four children. He is Slammin' Sammy, a fairy-tale figure rising from poverty in the Dominican Republic to the 55th floor above Chicago's Lake Shore Drive.

Bill Dedman

#61. For anyone inclined to caricature environmental history as 'environmental determinism,' the contrasting histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti provide a useful antidote. Yes, environmental problems do constrain human societies, but the societies' responses also make a difference.

Jared Diamond

#62. My favorite Dominican dish to indulge in is anything with crab.

Pharrell Williams

#63. By the late 1970s, repression and economic chaos were causing increasing unrest throughout Latin America. Army strongmen were forced to cede power in Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

Stephen Kinzer

#64. Legislation for the Caribbean basin has led to more jobs in the Dominican Republic.

Elliott Abrams

#65. For my first three books the setting (or place if you will) has always been a given - N.J. and the Dominican Republic and some N.Y.C. - so from one perspective you could say that the place in my work always comes first.

Junot Diaz

#66. The Niagara on a bicycle. It's like trying to cross the Niagara on a bicycle, which is impossible, but it's an expression in the Dominican Republic that basically says that someone is going through a hard time.

Juan Luis Guerra

#67. Schoolchildren don't normally learn this poem about Columbus's second voyage to Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic today): "In fourteen hundred and ninety-five, sixteen hundred people he kidnapped alive." Columbus

Brian D. McLaren

#68. Shot at twenty-seven times - what a Dominican number ...

Junot Diaz

#69. I doubt that I can speak for all Dominican men but I doubt they can either.

Junot Diaz

#70. My first year in Japan was very tough, just like my first year in the minors. But at least there I had a lot of Dominican people and Latin people I can talk to. If you don't have anybody to talk to, you can get depressed. But if you find someone who talks your language, it's easier.

Alfonso Soriano

#71. Dominican Republic is, is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etcetera.

Pat Robertson

#72. Tell her that you love her hair, that you love her skin, her lips, because, in truth, you love them more than you love your own.

Junot Diaz

#73. Lola swore she would never return to that terrible country. On one of our last nights as novios she said, Ten million Trujillos is all we are.

Junot Diaz

#74. This is the one who will find us. He's the one who will lead them all back to me someday. He's the explorer. El curioso.

Sandra Rodriguez Barron

#75. If everyone could just live near the ocean, I think we'd all be happier. It's hard to be down about anything knee deep in the sand.

Crystal Woods

#76. You know all about love, but that is not enough. You must also learn that hate comes from God as well, that it too is in the Lord's service. And in times like these, with the world fallen to the state it has, hate serves God more than love.

Nikos Kazantzakis

#77. But no matter what the truth, remember: Dominicans are Caribbean and therefore have an extraordinary tolerance for extreme phenomena

Junot Diaz

#78. No, women like you don't write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness, the rebelliousness.

Edwidge Danticat