Quotes from F. Sionil Jose

Life is always sad. That's what makes suicide so tempting because life is all that we really have and haven't. Death makes us equals, too, because the foul and the good all die. The past, the present, and the future-what escape is there from these? None-and yet sometimes we are life's happy victims.

In a world grown dark with deceit there there are many who are blinded and few who can hold up a light so that we can see the way. More important, so that we can look at ourselves, as well as others, and know how similar we are to the herd.

Never, never hide your pain, scream as if you are dying so you will not be harmed more. Never, never hide your poverty, too. The worst enemies of the poor are the poor themselves. And never, never appear that you are virtuous and without sin. It it is the virtuous who have many enemies because for they shame the many without virtue.

No man stops caring as long as he breathes. As long as he has a mind and memory, he will care. This is what separates us from the animals. We have feelings.

We compromise ourselves the day we are born. If we are looking for the original sin, there it is- our incapacity to live honestly with ourselves because we are human, because we are shackled by custom, by obligations and we accept compromise only in the light of our conscience, answerable as we are only to ourselves.

When you love someone, that love has no limit, no measure, because you know in your deepest being that when that love demands sacrifice, you will give it without question. You will not look for reasons, for justification - the act of giving, of sacrificing, is a natural compulsion, like breathing, and it will, in the end, surprise you because you did it without second thoughts.

I wish I could be honest and true, but truth as I see it is not something abstract, a pious generality---It is justice at work, righteous, demanding, disciplined, sincere and unswerving; otherwise, it is not, it cannot be truth at all.

Life is worth living really but only if we believe it is, if we believe further that life is eternal not because the tissues last forever, but because the imagination never dies

Life is holy and it is for all of us. God's design, I cannot understand myself and I never will, but I do know that what we are experiencing now will pass and in the end we will all be brothers, not just blood brothers, as we are, but brothers in spirit. Neither you nor I can change the world or human nature and we can only aim at changing attitudes - and perhaps teach those who have so much to give a portion of their blessings to those who have less.

I believe in humanity - not just you or Mother, but all mankind. Do I sound like a preacher or a cheap politician making a pretty speech? This is not what I intend to do... I believe in life, that it is sweet and that, for all its occasional bitterness, we-man, that is-are headed toward something better - fulfillment. There is much shame, however, and so much hypocrisy around us and these inhibit our fulfillment as human beings.

We cannot be rooted in the past forever. We must not be sentimental.

To THOSE who want to lift this nation from the dungheap of history, the past does not matter — only the present, the awareness of the deadening rot which surrounds and suffocates us, and what we must do to vanquish it.

While violence is necessary, it is not the only instrument for change. There are others just as good. But you must accept violence- you cannot begin to build until you have destroyed. You don't know love until you have hated.

Literature suffers because writers give their books to colleagues who will then write glowing reviews or saccharine introductions.

We do not conquer life, no one can conquer what one cannot define, but at least it is there and it is ours to shape and to possess fully, with all the senses working, with all the powers of the heart surging, as we search for the answer to the greatest riddle of them all- death, the ultimate end, the enemy of all men, the final quietus to the noblest of emotions, the tenacity and ethereal creativity of faith.

No stranger can come battering down my door and say he brings me light. This I have within me. -Istak

I did not hesitate to tell them that I not only had the authority of facts, but that it was my conviction that our worst enemy was ourselves, our vanity, our pride and our desire for honor.

I believe in life, that it is sweet and that, for all its occasional bitterness, we-man, that is-are headed toward something better - fulfillment. There is much shame, however, and so much hypocrisy around us and these inhibit our fulfillment as human beings.

Listen, our history is a history...of failed revolutions. Always, in the end, someone was bought or someone turned traitor. We are a nation of traitors. We are a nation of traitors...we delight in seeing the downfall of others, even friends.

There is so much that the past can teach us. -The Cripple

Indeed time has that ultimate capacity to render the passions of the past when recalled in the present as no more than grandiloquent gestures.

Ubi boni, malum prosperat (Where good men are silent, evil prospers)

Don Jacinto did not reply; perhaps he understood that there was no measure for love of country except in sacrifice, and why ask the poor for more sacrifices? It was the comfortable, the rich like himself--although Istak did not put it this way--who should express it with their wealth. The poor had only their lives to give. -Istak

But when will Filipinas ever be free from its leaders who are wealthy and crooked, in whom we have put so much trust?" -The Cripple