The Mambo Kings Play Songs Of Love Quotes
"For me, my father's gentle rapping on Ricky Ricardo's door has always been a call from the beyond."
"Desi Arnaz had caught their act one night, and it was natural that he ask them to sing on his show."
"My father's face with his horsey grin, arching eyebrows, big fleshy ears—a family trait—that slight look of pain, how beautiful it all seemed to me then."
"He was in a room in the Hotel Splendour, not far from the narrow stairway that led up to the recording studios of Orchestra Records."
"Everything was different then: 125th Street was jumping with clubs, there was less violence, there were fewer beggars, more mutual respect between people."
"She liked him, liked it, liked his manliness and his arrogance and the way he threw her around on the bed."
"Thinking about Vanna threw open the door to that time."
"That was the thing in those days: to be seen with a woman like Vanna was prestigious as a passport, a high-school diploma, a full-time job, a record contract, a 1951 DeSoto."
"The music played, he half expected to open his eyes and find Miss Vanna Vane seated on that chair across the room."
"But the most famous success story would be that of a fellow crooner whom the brothers knew from Santiago de Cuba, Desi Arnaz."
"He had moments of tenderness that surprised him toward the women he went out with, as if he wanted truly to fall in love."
"The crush of bones, the whirring of machines, memories, music, and his dreams of María."
"He even took his dreams about María to the meat factory where Pablo had gotten him a job."
"He could not look at another woman, and the only way he overcame this unbearable pain was by daydreaming about María."
"The more he thought about her, the more mythic she became."
"Every ounce of love he’d received in his short life was captured and swallowed up by the image of María."
"He was the man plagued with memory, the way his brother Cesar Castillo would be twenty-five years later."
"He was the man who wrote twenty-two different versions of 'Bella María de Mi Alma'."
"He’d return from these sojourns maintaining a silence for a week at a time."
"One day in 1944, Luisa happily told Cesar that she was pregnant, as if the birth of a child later that year would shore up their crumbling marriage."
"What you hear isn’t true, Julián. I love Luisa with all my heart, I would never want things to go badly for her."
"This brush with him turned the Mambo King into a better husband for a time."
"Not because he didn’t love Luisa, but because he felt that abuse and discontent boiled in his blood and he did not want to hurt her."
""Why are you so cruel to me?" she’d ask him again and again."
"Away, away, away from all this was how Cesar saw it."
"He found a letter saying that his abuse had driven her away."
"Hearing the word "cruel, cruel, cruel" in his sleep, he had a dream."
"At least he got a song out of it, he thought now—"Solitude of My Heart," a bolero from 1949."
"She lived with her older sister, Ana María, who had come up from Cuba to keep her company."
"She liked to read because it took her mind off her loneliness."
"She went out because she didn’t want to be a wallflower, but she was always happy to get home."
"She’d double-date with Ana María but disliked it when the evenings lasted until three or four in the morning."
"She’d remember heading out into the ballroom again, down along the shoeshine stand."
"Life was funny: she was thinking about Nestor Castillo and moving through the crowd toward the bar."
"She was happy for the first time since she could remember and she adored Nestor for it."
"I can’t explain my torment, for I don’t know how to live without your love."
"What delicious pain love has brought to me in the form of a woman."
"My torment and ecstasy, María, my life, Beautiful María of my soul."
"Life is funny, yes? Who would think that we would be sitting here these years later, getting reacquainted?"
"I’ve had it!" He spent the night awake dreaming about the possibilities for his future."
"If only she had not seen the weakness in his soul."
"He didn’t sit around dwelling on these thoughts, he dreamed them."
"In today’s America one must think about the future. Ally yourself with progress and tomorrow!"
"The confident, self-assured man looks to the future and never backwards to the past."
"The heart of every success is a plan that takes you forward."
"In moments of doubt you must remember that every obstacle is only a temporary delay."
"That every problem can be solved. When there is a will there is a way."
"He was someone who came to us from Cuba and now he has gone on to a more glorious ancient kingdom, the kingdom of everlasting light, brilliant with the love of God who is everywhere in His infinite universe."
"I was so fucked up with sadness that I may have crossed the boundary of good manners, but if I did, that was because I wanted so badly to give to her all that God had chosen to take away."
"The sad business of memory came over Cesar in waves like the initial symptoms of a bad winter influenza."
"You can love a woman so much it sometimes breaks your heart."
"You become a musician and you’ll be a poor man all your life."
"My heart is made of gold. Never forget that he is your father. Never forget that he is your blood."
"He was happiest when he would go to someone’s house for dinner and find himself on a blind date."
"He drank rum until God hung low in the heavens like a heavy cloak."
"His friends who came to visit him were either beset with woes or looking to get something from the ex-Mambo King."
"Cesar was never beyond the generosity of offering a man a drink."
"His plumber was this one-eyed man named Leo, a Sicilian, who used to play jazz violin with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra."
"The flamboyant Cesar Castillo became a good listener and got the reputation of a man to whom one might tell one’s troubles."
"Most people felt sorry for him and wished the Mambo King well."
"The great Rafael Hernández inviting him over to his place on 113th to talk music and have some good food."
"‘You resemble,’ said the Mambo King, ‘a goddess from Arará.’"
"Arará. It’s a kingdom in Africa where all magic is born."
"That’s what all them spiritist shops are called. Arará this, Arará that."
"‘You’re very beautiful,’ Cesar said, but he could hardly hold up his head to look at her."
"I’d rather go out like a man, rather than slowly rotting away like a piece of old fruit."
"Thank you, nurse, thank you! Have a good day!"
"Forget it, hombre. You’re too old, what would a young woman want with you?"
"Forget this shit with special diets and no more booze!"
"If I can’t have you, I don’t know what I’m going to do."
"Justice not served, but she was awarded alimony payments of fifty dollars a week."
"I’m still working here and there. Nothing spectacular, but I’m still out there exercising my vocal cords."
"I mean, I had never learned to read, and from what I could tell, neither could Arnaz."
"For me, he was very Cuban, and the music he played in those days was good and Cuban enough for me."
"I’m sorry we did not get the chance to see each other."
"Cesar Castillo, we know you’re very tired and soon it will be time for you to die."
"No matter what, Lydia, this old man loves you."
"Keep up your drinking and you’ll end up in the morgue."
"His life was much more beautiful when he believed that a benevolent angel walked behind him."
"When you play music you have to remember that just about everything composed has to do with love and courtship."
"Yes, love was so beautiful, the music told him, pulling him through the fields at night when the owls hooted and the shooting stars passed overhead in the sky, all the planets and stars melting like wax."
"And now beautiful snow was falling, Bing Crosby snow, twirling-in-circles-with-your-mouth-open snow."
"When you are dying, you just know it, because you feel a heavy black rag being pulled out of you."
"I come here because I do not know when the Master will return. I pray because I do not know when the Master will want me to pray."
"One day, all this will either be gone or it will last forever. Which do you think?"