Luis Valdez Quotations

Having Chris (Raines) back has meant a lot to us. He has the most experience along with Ernesto (Chamberlain).

We still have two (vying for regional). That'll be cool (if both Alexander and United can make it to regional).

We'll have to play better defense (than the last time we played them). We have to control J.C.'s touches and points in the paint.

Raines came in and gave us a big spark and presence in the inside.

That's been the way the season has gone for us. Laurel, Martinez, Ryan Cruz and Erick Cardenas have come up big the whole season.

Cesar knew how to work, and he knew how to get things done. Throughout his life he showed how important it is to turn negative experiences into positives.

The library (in the migrant community) I grew up in was my only link to the outside world.

A lot of the public responses are based on the prejudices and ignorance, they've been inherited from previous generations. California has always been a multicultural state, but the thing is, you've got to open your eyes and people in general need to get over their own prejudices.

A lot of people don't realize the roots of Batman are really Latino. They don't go back to the bat god, the ones the Mayans had - they had one that was a "bat man," they had sculptures of him, literally they had bats down there - but the other, more relatively recent inspiration for Batman was Zorro. But Zorro was based on the California bandits. Joaquin Murrieta and Tiburico Vásquez.

When you start at the beginning of your career [that] was really focused on your own needs and obstacles, and ultimately you realize you're not really doing it for yourself.

It comes out of human beings, it comes from the dark side of the human being, when people don't give a hoot about other people and they'll steal and rob and rob the food out of baby's mouths, so it's incumbent on every new generation to develop a social conscience and to really defend themselves. And that takes demonstrations sometimes.

It's absolutely essential for every generation to capture that social responsibility. Injustice grows like weeds. The injustices of the world are like weeds, and if you do nothing they'll choke your whole garden, man.

No Statue of Liberty ever greeted our arrival in this country...we did not, in fact, come to the United States at all. The United States came to us.