Miguel Syjuco Quotes

I transform fiction into memory. ~ Miguel Syjuco

How could a feeling that leaves you so hollow be a pain that is so sharp? ~ Miguel Syjuco

I used to believe authenticity could be achieved solely by describing, in our own words, one's own fragment of experience. This was of course predicated on the complete intellectual and aesthetic independence of the "I". One eventually realizes such intellectual isolationism promotes style, ego, awards. But not change. ~ Miguel Syjuco

I read a blog about this young filmmaker in the Philippines who made a short film, and one of the characters in the film reads my novel and then starts discussing the novel with someone. The idea that my book can inspire another artist and be part of that other artist's work ... that's the reason I write. ~ Miguel Syjuco

I want to write a book that makes people debate, and makes people think, interact with each other and exchange ideas ... I write because I'm engaged in this big conversation. ~ Miguel Syjuco

I have no illusions that my work can rouse the masses to create change, because literature simply doesn't have that power anymore in my country, if it does anywhere. But I do hope that it can be read by those who are in positions to create change, or that it can at least be part of that dialogue. ~ Miguel Syjuco

If our greatest fear is to sink away alone and unremembered, the brutality that time will inflict upon each of us will always run stronger than any river's murky waves. ~ Miguel Syjuco

I'm home and safe and filled with the comfort of being somewhere I've already been. The ruckus of homecoming is brutally enjoyable and everyone makes me feel like a champion. And all I had to do was stay away long enough. ~ Miguel Syjuco

There is that potential of the expats coming back to the Philippines. But sadly they are no opportunities, no incentive for them to come back home. Successive governments have, in fact, been training them to export them rather than working on the economy to welcome them home. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Fiction, however, sometimes ensures disappointment with reality ~ Miguel Syjuco

You were so beautiful when you were young. So much idealism it was inspiring. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Children sometimes know best and we chide them for being precocious. Then we grow aged and become again like children, and they call us wise. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Angst is not the human condition, it's the purgatory between what we have and what we want but can't get. ~ Miguel Syjuco

I don't see myself as any different from all the other Filipinos who have gone abroad looking for opportunity, to be a nurse, a labourer, a maid or a prostitute. ~ Miguel Syjuco

The immigrant experience in 'Ilustrado' was only a small part of what I intended to be a broader look at the Filipino experience, even if that broader look was itself merely a specific perspective. ~ Miguel Syjuco

I studied in New York. I fell in love with an Australian-born, half-Filipina girl. So we moved to Australia when she went to her university and I moved with her. We moved to Montreal because she was going to take her year abroad, and I wanted to see if I could keep on writing there. It's really hard to make it as a writer in the Philippines. ~ Miguel Syjuco

The slaves of today will become the tyrants of tomorrow
the proletariat overthrows the hegemon to become the hegemon itself, only to be eventually overthrown by a proto-hegemon that will in turn lose its position. It is this dizzying cycle that keeps humanity chasing the tail it lost millennia ago ~ Miguel Syjuco

I have to believe that literature can effect change; otherwise, I would have no purpose in my life and would have wasted four years on 'Ilustrado.' ~ Miguel Syjuco

To be angry implies you care ~ Miguel Syjuco

A father must take credit for his child, but never a child for his father. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Vilification, by its definition, creates an antagonistic struggle, an us-versus-them mentality, that throws us all into a senseless battle-royale ~ Miguel Syjuco

The Philippines, it has a politics of patronage. Family and favors, in addition to the old cliche of guns, goons and gold, really do still hold a lot of sway. ~ Miguel Syjuco

I've learned that I have to be happy with creating discussion and debate and that I shouldn't be trying to write a book that appeals to the consensus. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Fiction is a very powerful tool for teaching history. The Philippines was the first Iraq, the first Vietnam, the first Afghanistan, in the sense that it was the United States' initial or baptismal experience in nation-building. ~ Miguel Syjuco

'Illustrado' is not an autobiography. Only the ideas are autobiographical; the ideas of bitterness, frustration, unchanging society, an individual lost, social awkwardness ... The book satirises archetypes from across Filipino society, and I felt that the least I could do was offer myself up, too. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Let me welcome you to my first country, my Third World. ~ Miguel Syjuco

To be an honest writer, you have to be away from home, and totally alone in life. ~ Miguel Syjuco

We referenced fictional characters as if they were people to learn from. As if real-life people were too nebulous, too private and unreal for us to understand. ~ Miguel Syjuco

History is changed by martyrs who tell the truth. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Literature is an ethical leap. It is a moral decision. A perilous exercise in constant failure. Literature should have grievances, because there are so many grievances in the world. ~ Miguel Syjuco

I'm making this confession without hope for absolution.
One morning, I pretended to go crazy. Perhaps in pretending, I proved myself so. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Love isn't based on gratitude. Respect isn't based on debt. ~ Miguel Syjuco

He fidgets. Thinks. Observes his fellow passengers. Judges everyone, in the traditional Filipino sport of justifying both personal and shared insecurities. ~ Miguel Syjuco

You can't bring an unwritten place to life without losing something substantial. Manila is the cradle, the graveyard, the memory. The Mecca, the Cathedral, the bordello. The shopping mall, the urinal, the discotheque. I'm hardly speaking in metaphor. It's the most impermeable of cities. How does one convey all that? ~ Miguel Syjuco

I once thought that The Bridges Ablaze would be that masterpiece. I'm not so sure it matters much anymore. You must learn this while you are still young. Live in the crux of the present. And write to explain the world to yourself and to others. Look forward only to the summer of your first convertible. Look forward only if what's in front of you is a mirror. Because one day you'll be so busy looking backward, and everything will feel like winter. If you still don't get it, pare, let me make it abundantly clear. Just write and write justly. Ezra Pound be damned. Poets lie though beautifully. Don't make things new, make them whole. ~ Miguel Syjuco

As we all came to discover the limitations of assimilation, we grew closer as a family ~ Miguel Syjuco

My absence was gradual, until one day it was complete. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Sometimes, courage is really just cowardice. Sometimes the bravest thing is to let go. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Being remembered is all anyone can ask from a lost love. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Because falling, if you live in the moment,is really just flying, at least until you read the ground ~ Miguel Syjuco

We liked to believe there is an alternate world, a better world, populated entirely by characters created by the yearnings of humanity
governing and inspiring themselves with all the lucidity wit which we rendered them. ~ Miguel Syjuco

I treat my writing like a day job, like my main job, even if for many years I was doing other jobs to pay the bills. I worked as a copy editor. I was a medical guinea pig. I was an eBay power seller of ladies' handbags. I was an assistant to a bookie at the horse races. I bartended. I did anything I could to make ends meet. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Love and honesty don't mix. ~ Miguel Syjuco

I don't believe in nationalism. I think it's a bunch of slogans. It's a bunch of poor attempts at creating pride. My problem with nationalism is that it becomes exclusionary. We start to exclude people. ~ Miguel Syjuco

How can anyone underestimate the ballistic quality of words? Invisible things happen in intangible moments. What should keep us writing is precisely that possibility of explosions ~ Miguel Syjuco

I surprise myself that I'm not dead in the gutter somewhere, surprised that I haven't given up. ~ Miguel Syjuco

When you live in the Philippines or a country like that, you develop something of a very thick skin because you're confronted every day with all of the problems all around you. ~ Miguel Syjuco

How did we become so prejudiced by our idiosyncrasies? ... We shared the same languages, but spoke of worlds so subtly different that language was not enough. Over time the big things were left unsaid; they gave way to the little things, those once-endearing imperfections that had somewhere become deal breakers. ~ Miguel Syjuco

When you're unhappy with your life, you become more selfish with it. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Oh, how wonderfully romantic of you. Romantics are really only in love with themselves. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Freedom is the only thing we must demand in life, for all other good things stem from it ~ Miguel Syjuco

There are only three truths. That which can be known. That which can never be known. The third, which concerns the writer alone, truly is neither of these. ~ Miguel Syjuco

morality... comes at a price. ~ Miguel Syjuco

All of humanity's crimes,' Salvador said ... 'are only degrees of theft. ~ Miguel Syjuco

The little things, you know, eventually become everything. ~ Miguel Syjuco

How do such flaws become beautiful in the right person? ~ Miguel Syjuco

I look at western literature and especially North American literature, and I feel like it gets bogged down so much with all of that, with domestic stories and relationships and a woman dealing with the loss of her husband. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

And usually [the philosopher] philosophizes either in order to resign himself to life, or to seek some finality in it, or to distract himself and forget his griefs, or for pastime and amusement. ~ Miguel De Unamuno

I just think about the fight and what can happen. In the ring, It's my time to shine in front of everyone. ~ Miguel Cotto

And killing time is perhaps the essence of comedy, just as the essence of tragedy is killing eternity. ~ Miguel De Unamuno

Imagine living your life without being afraid to take a risk and to explore life. ~ Miguel Angel Ruiz

We cannot even predict what kinds of emergent properties would appear when animals begin interacting as part of a brain-net. In theory, you could imagine that a combination of brains could provide solutions that individual brains cannot achieve by themselves. ~ Miguel Nicolelis

All knowledge has an ultimate goal. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is, say what you will, nothing but a dismal begging of the question. ~ Miguel De Unamuno

There are pretenses which are very sincere, and marriage is their school. ~ Miguel De Unamuno

The 4 "I" in Simple Ideas: Involve individuals; Inspire crowds; Instil creativity; Innovate humanity ! ~ Miguel Reynolds Brandao

Take away the cause, and the effect ceases. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

...without intelligence, there can be no humour. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

There is a remedy for everything except death, responded Don Quixote, ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Don Quixote is so crazy that he is sure no author could have invented him ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

There is no remembrance which time does not obliterate, nor pain which death does not terminate. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

If you are ambitious of climbing up to the difficult, and in a manner inaccessible, summit of the Temple of Fame, your surest way is to leave on one hand the narrow path of Poetry, and follow the narrower track of Knight-Errantry, which in a trice may raise you to an imperial throne. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Ye love-smitten host, know that to Dulcinea only I am dough and sugar-paste, flint to all others; for her I am honey, for you aloes. For ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

YOU ARE AN ARTIST OF THE SPIRIT
Find yourself and express yourself in your own particular way. Express your love openly. Life is nothing but a dream, and if you create your life with love, your dream becomes a masterpiece of art. ~ Miguel Ruiz

There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Rise and demand; you are a burning flame.
You are sure to conquer there where the final horizon
Becomes a drop of blood, a drop of life,
Where you will carry the universe on your shoulders,
Where the universe will bear your hope. ~ Miguel Angel Asturias

To be prepared is half the victory. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

I'll lay a bet," said Sancho, "that before long there won't be a tavern, roadside inn, hostelry, or barber's shop where the story of our doings won't be painted up; but I'd like it painted by the hand of a better painter than painted these." "Thou art right, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "for this painter is like Orbaneja, a painter there was at Ubeda, who when they asked him what he was painting, used to say, 'Whatever it may turn out'; and if he chanced to paint a cock he would write under it, 'This is a cock,' for fear they might think it was a fox." - Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote ~ Michael Gruber

I feel like R&B as a genre has become a caricature of itself. ~ Miguel

In order to protect our emotional wounds, and because of our fear of being hurt, humans create something very sophisticated in the mind: a big denial system. In that denial system we become the perfect liars. We lie so perfectly that we lie to ourselves and we even believe our own lies. We don't notice we are lying, and sometimes even when we know we are lying, we justify the lie and excuse the lie to protect ourselves from the pain of our wounds. The denial system is like a wall of fog in front of our eyes that blinds us from seeing the truth. We wear a social mask because it's too painful to see ourselves or to let others see us as we really are. And the denial system lets us pretend that everyone believes what we want them to believe about us. We put up these barriers for protection, to keep other people away, ~ Miguel Ruiz

To its credit, hip-hop is my favorite genre, to this day, and it's hard not to be influenced by the culture and by the movement of it and by the soul of it. ~ Miguel

Life brings you exactly what you need. ~ Miguel Angel Ruiz

Twitter is definitely not the place to handle business per se. ~ Miguel

We play the game of the adults, we play the game of the outside Dream, and we lose. We lose our innocence, we lose our freedom, we lose our happiness, and we lose our tendency to love. ~ Miguel Ruiz

If we see a child who is two or three, perhaps four years old, we find a free human. Why is this human free? Because this human does whatever he or she wants to do. The human is completely wild. Just like a flower, a tree, or an animal that has not been domesticated – wild! And if we observe humans who are two years old, we find that most of the time these humans have a big smile on their face and they're having fun. They are exploring the world. They are not afraid to play. They are afraid when they are hurt, when they are hungry, when some of their needs are not met, but they don't worry about the past, don't care about the future, and only live in the present moment. Very young children are not afraid to express what they feel. ~ Miguel Ruiz

At this the duchess, laughing all the while, said: Sancho Panza is right in all he has said, and will be right in all he shall say ... ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Words don't need to be spoken to devastate. They have only to be thought. Words band together to form opinions, which strut along the back roads of our minds, inciting doubt and controversy. Opinions rally toward a cause - a belief. ~ Miguel Ruiz