Quotes by Filipino authors

"The youth is the hope of our future"

"There can be no tyrants where there are no slaves"

"It is a useless life that is not consecrated to a great ideal. It is like a stone wasted on the field without becoming a part of any edifice"

"While a people preserves its language; it preserves the marks of liberty"

"He who does not know how to look back at where he came from will never get to his destination"

"He who does not love his own language is worse than an animal and smelly fish"

"I want ordinary people to enjoy a decent standard of living, with ever increasing security, comfort and joy"

"I want justice to be so pervasive that it will be taken for granted, just as injustice is taken for granted today"

"I sow; my successor reaps. This is the majesty of democracy"

"While there's been much progress on terrorism, there's still much work to do and it is very important that the countries work together in order to address this threat together"

"Now I ask you to make your sacrifice. Take a gamble. I took the plunge and I'm glad of it"

"It is simply the truth that the political system that I am part of has degenerated to the point that it needs fundamental change"

"The power of one, if fearless and focused, is formidable, but the power of many working together is better"

"In the time one is given, the steward must make the most of the talents one is given by the Lord"

"I'm not worried. I'm in control"

"We have the hardest working people in the world, the most adaptable and the most congenial to employ"

"I have sat at the sumptuous tables of power, but I have not run away with the silverware"

"My identity is linked to my grandmother, who's pure Filipino, as pure as you can probably get. And that shaped my imagination. So that's how I identify"

"I think for a lot of so-called post-colonial peoples, there's a feeling of not being quite legitimate, of not being pure enough"

"Life is not simple, and people can't be boxed into being either heroes or villains"

"We didn't have television until I was about eight years old, so it was either the movies or radio. A lot of radio drama. That was our television, you know. We had to use our imagination. So it was really those two things, and the comics, that I immersed myself in as a child"

"I don't believe in sampling some Tibetan music just to make it sound groovy, but you do your homework, you understand what you're doing with it"

"I love writing dialogue, and I think a lot of my writing is visual and very cinematic"

"Everything matters. Time is precious"

"There were also horror shows on the radio. Very terrifying and thrilling to me as a kid. They had all these creepy sound effects. They would come on at ten o'clock at night, and I just would scare myself to death"

"Music is very influential to my writing, as are theater and film"

"But I think there's a genuine joy, too, a sense that no matter what, even if my stomach's growling, I'm going to dance. That's what I want to leave people with at the end of the play. After all this, people still know how to live"

"I don't know what issues concerning identity have helped contemporary fiction evolve to what it is now. All I know is that the range of voices that are being heard and published is a lot more diverse than when I was coming up"

"I also identify as a Latin person, a person who has Latin blood"

"Hybridity keeps me from being rigid about most things. It has taught me to appreciate the contradictions in the world and in my life. I scavenge from the best"