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 More Quotes by Miguel Syjuco More Quotes From Miguel Syjuco Sometimes one waits too long for the perfect moment before snapping the picture. You never realize that you needed was to change perspective. Miguel Syjuco perfect patience long Postmodernism was a reaction to modernism. Where modernism was about objectivity, postmodernism was about subjectivity. Where modernism sought a singular truth, postmodernism sought the multiplicity of truths. Miguel Syjuco subjectivity reactions objectivity To be an honest writer, you have to be away from home, and totally alone in life. Miguel Syjuco away-from-home honest home 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 shopping cities memories History is changed by martyrs who tell the truth. Miguel Syjuco martyr changed telling-the-truth 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 champion home long 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 tyrants humanity tails When I was young, I spent my days and nights trying to impress future generations. I spent them. They're gone. All because I was deathly afraid of being forgotten. And then came the regret. The worst things of all worst things. Miguel Syjuco regret trying night Angry men have little to live for when their rage becomes ineffective. Miguel Syjuco angry-man littles men 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 iraq powerful teaching 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 literature believe years 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 fear rivers running Freedom is the only thing we must demand in life, for all other good things stem from it Miguel Syjuco stem demand good-things 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 decision should-have exercise Clichés remind and reassure us that we're not alone, that others have trod this ground long ago. Miguel Syjuco not-alone long-ago long 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 real character people Being remembered is all anyone can ask from a lost love. Miguel Syjuco remembered lost-love lost Angst is not the human condition, it’s the purgatory between what we have and what we want but can’t get. Miguel Syjuco angst human-condition want It kills me how these days everyone has clinical justification for their strangeness. Miguel Syjuco justification kill-me these-days Love and honesty don't mix. Miguel Syjuco love-and-honesty honesty
