Quotes by Miguel Syjuco

About Miguel Syjuco:

Miguel Syjuco is a Filipino writer from Manila and the grand prize winner of the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize for his first novel Ilustrado.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

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

If I were to go back to the Philippines, I would probably end up teaching creative writing at a university. I wouldn't be able to write, for I would become too jaded to be able to view the existing situation objectively.

Miguel Syjuco

A man's life is all he has. When you're old, it's all you'll ever have.

Miguel Syjuco

To be angry implies you care

Miguel Syjuco

Angry men have little to live for when their rage becomes ineffective.

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 ...

Miguel Syjuco

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

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

Fiction, however, sometimes ensures disappointment with reality

Miguel Syjuco

...when you hate someone so much, a part of you wants desperately to forgive them. But you can't decide if it's because you really want, or if you just want to stop hating. I still don't know if forgiveness is generous or selfish. Maybe both.

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 keep...

Miguel Syjuco

All of humanity's crimes,' Salvador said, spitting a bone atop the pyramidal pile in his bowl, 'are only degrees of theft.

Miguel Syjuco

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

Miguel Syjuco

Whatever they may say, your story is truly your own. You have a responsibility to it, the way a father has to a child

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

morality... comes at a price.

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

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

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

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...

Miguel Syjuco

Author Bio

  • NameMiguel Syjuco
  • DescriptionFilipino writer
  • BornNovember 17, 1976
  • CountryPhilippines
  • ProfessionWriter
  • WorksCrispin Salvador