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.

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.'

All of humanity’s crimes,′ Salvador said... ’are only degrees of theft.

Cliches remind and reassure us that we’re not alone, that other have trod this ground long ago.

Maybe maturity is merely accepting the tally of all the disappearing options of life.

Children sometimes know best and we chide them for being precocious. Then we grow aged and become again like children, and they call us wise.

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.

Oh, sweetheart. What can anyone do? That’s just the way things are. You really think you can change the world?

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

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.