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" Professional societies are sooner or later fractured by the ego of their leaders. Everyone wants to be president, chairman, CEO; no one wants to be a mere follower. "

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" In the '50s, I was traveling alone all over Mindanao, Basilan, all the way to Tawi-Tawi with just a camera and a notebook. I always stayed in the houses of Moros. "

F. Sionil Jose

Camera

Over

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" Ninoy Aquino was a friend; I knew his faults, which were outweighed by his virtues. "

" What is needed in the theater, in fact for all our art forms, is a vibrant critical tradition. "

" Writers are historians, too. It is in literature that the greater truths about a people and their past are found. "

" For them who delay aging, who infuse decrepit bodies with youth and beauty - they must rejoice in the fullness of their deeds. "

" We must know our own roles. We should also know the roles that others play, and the rules such roles follow. In this manner, social harmony is maintained. It is when we overstep our roles, or act without knowing them, that social anarchy ensues. "

" I regret that I have not written more, shouted louder, and acted out my beliefs. "

F. Sionil Jose

Regret

Out

" I can imagine the writers of China, England and France, crippled and unsure of themselves when they feel that the ghosts of Confucius, Mencius, Chaucer and Shakespeare and Victor Hugo are looking over their shoulders. "

" Literature - Eastern and Western - abounds with stories, myths, legends about the search for youth, for eternal life. "

F. Sionil Jose

Youth

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" Some lucky people can be funny without half trying because they actually look funny, because acting funny is in their bones - fun as funny, not funny as crude slapstick. "

" All dictators, the rich and famous, to the lowest security guard who holds a gun, easily forget that power is transitory. "

" Self-respect, the value of 'face,' is universal but is most pronounced in China, then in Japan where the Confucian ethic is most influential. "

" I have always admired teachers because teaching, like the priesthood, medicine and writing, is a vocation. You don't become a teacher because you want wealth. It is the same with writing. "

" I find it always pleasurable talking with young people, particularly those aspiring to be writers, out of nostalgia, and because I've always felt that we oldies can learn so much from them and draw from them inspiration in our flagging and rickety years. "

" Art, whatever form it takes, requires hard work, craftsmanship and creativity. As a writer, I know my grammar, cadence, the music of prose, and the art of the narrative. "

" Contemplation is a luxury of the middle class, the very rich. "

" Class - or the economic status of individuals - is evident in all societies, some very well stratified by a rigid caste system determined by birth. "

" A weak people and its equally debilitated leaders are bludgeoned by history. It maims them into the cripples that they are meant to be. "

" I was a senior high school student at the Far Eastern University when the war with Japan broke out in 1941. "

" November is auspicious in so many parts of the country: the rice harvest is already in, the weather starts to cool, and the festive glow which precedes Christmas has began to brighten the landscape. "

" In the visual arts, particularly painting, I distrust all those abstractions, those artificial constructions. I have a very simple way of judging them: if I can do them, they are not art. "

" My reading of philosophy and history is desultory; I know so much and yet so little. "

" My wife and I often visit Rosales and the Ilokos as a matter of habit or whim induced by nostalgia, homesickness - whatever draws pilgrims to worshipped sanctuaries. Or, perhaps, what compels moths to seek the votive flame. "

" Tourists as well as natives want to see cultural achievements - whether it's the Banaue Terraces, the old churches or museums. "

" I can't understand Urdu, Bahasa or Russian, but when the Pakistani Faiz, the Indonesian Rendra and the Russian Rosdentvensky declaim, I can feel the living throb of rhythm and music, the warmth and passion of their poetry, as do the hundreds, not a mere roomful, of poetry lovers in the audience. "

" Always remember: the alleviation of poverty is never a political or economic issue - it is moral. "

" Language as a communication tool is the primary element from which literature is created. Even in pre-literate societies, it exists as songs, riddles, or epics that are chanted. "

" I was born in an Ilokano village called Cabugawan. Most of the houses in it were roofed with thatch, pan-aw, a species of wild grass. "

" We are shallow because our media are so horribly shallow. Every morning, I peruse the papers, and there is so little to read in them. It is the same with radio - all that noise, that artifice. "

" Christianity doesn't demand that we worship our ancestors. If we don't remember our ancestors, then, in all likelihood, we cannot also recall the distant past. "