Rican Quotes

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

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.

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

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.

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.

My concern is not for the judicial system, but for the reality that the shark fin mafia of Costa Rica has a price on my head, and a Costa Rican prison would provide an excellent opportunity for someone to exercise this lethal contract against me.

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.

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.

I’m a raucous Puerto Rican!

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.

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.

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 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.

In Ecuador, if I go after an Ecuadoran, I’m in trouble; if I go after a Costa Rican, I’m a hero.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

What was the competition? Well, I remember this Puerto Rican who came out in a short skirt and a gun.

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.

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

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.

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 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 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 know Spanish pretty well. I’m half-Puerto Rican – my mom is from Puerto Rico – so I have a lot of family there, and my mom’s first language is Spanish. But growing up in the States, and with my dad being from the States, I’m kind of just like this white kid.

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 used to watch my grandmother make fancy, Julia Child-style beef bourguignon. And growing up in New York City, I was exposed to many cultures. I experimented with Puerto Rican and Jamaican food.

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.

I’m half Puerto Rican and half Jewish and so, in some ways, living in many worlds at once is where I feel most at home.

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.’

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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!

I’m half Puerto Rican.

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?’