Andy Garcia quotes:

My uncle, who was a little more flamboyant, always said the guy who dressed the best was Fred Astaire.

I love to cook, and my wife loves to cook. Sometimes it's the appeal of the simplest of dishes - things you've grown up with in your life. Your emotional memory - something that not only affects your taste buds but that you've got an emotional attachment to.

Children need parameters, know what's right or wrong.

I'm an exile. My father had the courage to leave with his wife, his mother and three children under twelve. It took more courage to leave, to sacrifice everything for freedom, than to stay.

Everything I do in my life is very instinctual and in the moment. If I'm attracted to something, that's it. If I have reservations, those don't change till they're resolved. My first impression is how I go.

In a marriage, in any long-term relationship, not to bother with lying. There's no time for that. If you have any sort of secret life, it will come back to haunt you.

My grandfather was a very elegant individual. My father also. He was a lawyer and farmer in Cuba. In Miami, he had to go to work wherever he could. But whenever it was time to go out, you saw how they cared for how they looked.

There's good movies and there's bad movies. The genres are never dead, it's just about how to apply them and articulate them and execute them - the story, the quality of the writing, the acting, the design elements, the directorial execution - all these things make it what it is.

Movies are very hard to make, to get it all to come together. So many people have their say in what the end product of films are.

Children make you a better everything. Daughters open up a whole different sensibility to you. When you have children, it focuses you on them as opposed to on yourself.

I listen to and I play all kinds of music, and I'm interested in jazz and in bluegrass - I like it all - but Cuban music speaks to me in a certain way.

I think it's most important for children to understand the concept of respect and manners and also work ethic. I have a responsibility to those who came before me.

I've had my moments of insanity. But there is a certain responsibility to set proper examples for your children, and that influences your choices in every aspect of your life.

Great writing attracts great actors. It attracts money. Without a great script, you have nothing.

You are defined by who you are, by your choices in life, in all regards, not just in doing movies.

My son loves my carbonara. I've tried to master that recipe - it's very simple but very delicate. Once prepared it must be eaten quickly.

Every family is dysfunctional.

I'm a staunch anti-Castro individual.

I go where I'm stimulated. If I'm stimulated, I show up. As Mick Jagger sings: It's my life and I'll do what I want.

I'm not the type of person who goes through all this effort for a movie, and then doesn't care if anybody sees it. I want them to see it, and I want them to see it on the big screen.

She is Cuba. If you want to love her, you have to be with her, but you can't be with her in her current state. It's the point of view of all exiles - you have to leave the thing you cherish most.

I think if the movie has resonance and stimulates the viewer to talk about it, you can have as large an audience as you want. The most important thing for me is that the movie exists. And that's success enough already.

My first interest was always music, and somehow that channelled itself into films and acting. I don't know what the natural transition of it was. I mean I acted a little bit when I was young and like any kid would in a community theatre.

If you want to experiment, do something temporary.

Becoming a producer enables you to empower yourself, to make the film that you want to make. I have desires to make movies - I have movies I'm developing, and things that I'm interested in.

They say a lot of women would like to see me naked, but there's not a lens long enough for that.

It's impossible for everybody to be in sync, even the most proper family.

My son loves my carbonara. I've tried to master that recipe - it's very simple but very delicate. Once prepared it must be eaten quickly."

I don't think lying has any ultimate justification. I don't think it ever leads to anything positive. The good fight to have is not to lie. That's one of the challenges in a way.

You have to love the guy that you play, even if you play the villain, you've got to love him.

It's important, when going after a goal, to never lose sight of the integrity of the journey.

It is necessary for me to express the deep sorrow that I feel for all the Cuban people both inside and outside of Cuba that have suffered the atrocities and repression caused by Fidel Castro and his totalitarian regime.

A man should have a right to be religious if he wants to. The government should not be involved in those decisions.

I wish we didn't have to tell this story.

The promises of Fidel Castro's so-called revolution of pluralism and democracy, were and continue to be a false promise and a betrayal of all basic human rights.

I was a big fan of Joe's film, Narc, so when you hear there's a script coming over from Joe Carnahan, you know it's going to be interesting because he has such a fresh voice.

The executions, persecution and imprisonment of political dissidents and the LGBT community, denial of free press, elections and religious freedoms, continue to be Fidel Castro's legacy.

I don't control the movies that are offered to me, but I make choices based on certain parameters.

I am a traditional man. I'm a product of a traditional man. He sacrificed everything for his family.

Fidel Castro claimed that history would absolve him, but it can also condemn him.

I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. I just want (the audience) to have an experience that moves them.

If you have the right actors and you can give them the freedom to explore, you've done a lot of your work as a director.

I stand as I always have with the Cuban people who love, cherish and celebrate liberty. Hard-working, helpful people who open their hearts and homes to all, whether in Cuba or in exile.

I'm not worried about walking the streets and looking over my shoulder because of something I might have said.

It's better not to work than to work in something you don't want to be working in.

I pray for what I have always prayed for: the restoration of our constitution and absolute freedom for the people of Cuba. That dream is very much alive, that fight is very much alive.

Freedom was taken away from my family until we landed in America and it was given back to us.

I think good chemistry starts with mutual respect.

The size of budgets does not alter my decision if I should do it. If there's a movie with a budget of only $1 million that I find interesting, then I'll sign up, but it has to be in the hands of a director who can do something with it. Ultimately, it's a director's medium.

It depends. When it's the right scenario, it's just as stimulating and just as exciting for me. It's just a question of finding a piece of material that lights a fire under you.

Pictures make a lot of money doesn't determine whether the experience was...

I started in comedy when I first started as an actor on stage and doing improvisational theater and stuff like that. So a lot of people who know me know that sort of side of me. But I got the roles that I got as an young actor kind of steered me in a different direction, which were, at times, darker characters. And so comedy was not something that came easy for people to think of my in those terms.